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Ragnar Granit - This exhibit's Nobel Prize Winner

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Ragnar Granit - This exhibit's Nobel Prize Winner

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Ragnar Granit was one of three scientists who won the Nobel Prize for Physiology in 1957 for "their discoveries concerning the primary physiological and chemical visual processes in the eye."¹. He was a Finnish man living in Sweden, studying at the Karolinska Institutet. Also among the list of winners for these discoveries were two Americans, Halden Hartline and George Wald.

Granit won many awards like the Hans Cronstedt's Prize and the Sherrington Memorial Gold Medal in London¹ during his lifetime,  which lasted form when he was born in 1900 in Finland to March of 1991, when he died in Stockholm, Sweden.

Source:

https://www.nobelprize.org/prizes/medicine/1967/granit/biographical/

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Absorption (arbitrary units) vs. the color spectrum

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The "Dominator-Modulator" Theory of Vision

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The "Dominator-Modulator" Theory of Vision

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Throughout his life, Ragnar Granit made a vast number of discoveries in the retina, one of which being his "dominator-modulator" theory of vision in which he proposed, using the Young-Hemholtz trichromatic theory of vision, that in addition to the three types of cones used to distinguish three primary colors, there are optic nerve fibers that are sensitive to the whole spectrum of light and others are only sensitive to certain portions of the spectrum¹.

This discovery would prove to be the one that would define his life, for after he published his book, Sensory Mechanisms of the Retina, in 1947, he won his Nobel prize along with Harltine and Wald for these groundbreaking retinal discoveries².

Sources:

https://www.britannica.com/biography/Ragnar-Granit

https://www.barnardhealth.us/psychological-theories/granit-s-color-vision-theory.html

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In the country of Sweden in 1948, Gunnar actually spent a lot of time with Ragnar Granit in Sweden, and developed a new methodology to study the relationship between electricity and vision in the retina¹. He discovered neurons that we now refer to as horizontal cells, or cells in the retina that hyperpolarize instead of depolarize when stimulated with light¹.

Svaetichin furthered Granit's studies and provided the particular sensitivities of the different groups of cones that made up our perception of color, red, green, and blue, providing further evidence for the Young-Helmholtz trichromatic theory of color and helping Ragnar win his Nobel prize.

Source:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gunnar_Svaetichin

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Sir Charles Sherrington - a mentor to Granit

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Sir Charles Sherrington - a mentor to Granit

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Ragnar Granit had the pleasure of working with some fantastic minds in the 19th century, such as Sir Charles Sherrington, a fellow Nobel Prize winner on multiple occasions¹.

Sir Sherrington worked at Oxford University and England, where he studied physiology and eventually won the Nobel Prize in 1932 for his work in the discoveries of the functions of neurons². Sherrington also studied with Robert Koch in bacteriology. He focused mainly on neuron impulses and the reflexive, unconscious movements that our muscles make.

Sources:

https://www.nobelprize.org/prizes/medicine/1932/sherrington/facts/

https://www.nobelprize.org/prizes/medicine/1932/sherrington/biographical/

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C harles Scott Sherrington was born on November 27, 1857, at Islington, London. He was the son of James Norton Sherrington, of Caister, Great Yarmouth, who died when Sherrington was a young child. Sherrington's mother later married Dr. Caleb Rose of Ipswich, a good classical scholar and a noted archaeologist, whose interest in the English artists of the Norwich School no doubt gave Sherrington the interest in art that he retained throughout his life.

In 1876 Sherrington began medical studies at St. Thomas's Hospital and in 1878 passed the primary examination of the Royal College of Surgeons, and a year later the primary examination for the Fellowship of that College. After a short stay at Edinburgh he went, in 1879, to Cambridge as a noncollegiate student studying physiology under Michael Foster, and in 1880 entered Gonville and Caius College there.

In 1881 he attended a medical congress in London at which Sir Michael Foster discussed the work of Sir Charles Bell and others on the experimental study of the functions of nerves that was then being done in England and elsewhere in Europe. At this congress controversy arose about the effects of excisions of parts of the cortex of the brains of dogs and monkeys done by Ferrier and Goltz of Strasbourg. Subsequently, Sherrington worked on this problem in Cambridge with Langley, and with him published, in 1884, a paper on it. In this manner Sherrington was introduced to the neurological work to which he afterwards devoted his life.

In 1883 Sherrington became Demonstrator of Anatomy at Cambridge under Professor Sir George Humphrey, and during the winter session of 1883-1884 at St. Thomas's Hospital he demonstrated histology.

The years 1884 and 1885 were eventful ones for Sherrington, for during the winter of 1884-1885 he worked with Goltz at Strasbourg, in 1884 he obtained his M.R.C.S., and in 1885 a First Class in the Natural Sciences Tripos at Cambridge with distinction. During this year he published a paper of his own on the subject of Goltz's dogs. In 1885 he also took his M.B. degree at Cambridge and in 1886 his L.R.C.P.

In 1885 Sherrington went, as a member of a Committee of the Association for Research in Medicine, to Spain to study an outbreak of cholera, and in 1886 he visited the Venice district also to investigate the same disease, the material then obtained being examined in Berlin under the supervision of Virchow, who later sent Sherrington to Robert Koch for a six weeks' course in technique. Sherrington stayed with Koch to do research in bacteriology for a year, and in 1887 he was appointed Lecturer in Systematic Physiology at St. Thomas's Hospital, London, and also was elected a Fellow of Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge. In 1891 he was appointed in succession to Sir Victor Horsley, Professor and Superintendent of the Brown Institute for Advanced Physiological and Pathological Research in London. In 1895 he became Professor of Physiology at the University of Liverpool.

During his earlier years in Cambridge, Sherrington, influenced by W. H. Gaskell and by the Spanish neurologist, Ramón y Cajal, whom he had met during his visit to Spain, took up the study of the spinal cord. By 1891 his mind had turned to the problems of spinal reflexes, which were being much discussed at that time, and Sherrington published several papers on this subject and, during 1892-1894, others on the efferent nerve supply of muscles. Later, from 1893-1897, he studied the distribution of the segmented skin fields, and made the important discovery that about one-third of the nerve fibres in a nerve supplying a muscle are efferent, the remainder being motor.

At Liverpool he returned to his earlier study of the problem of the innervation of antagonistic muscles and showed that reflex inhibition played an important part in this. In addition to this, however, he was studying the connection between the brain and the spinal cord by way of the pyramidal tract, and he was at this time visited by the American surgeon Harvey Cushing, then a young man, who stayed with him for eight months.

In 1906 he published his well-known book: The Integrative Action of the Nervous System, being his Silliman Lectures held at Yale University the previous year, and in 1913 he was invited to become Waynfleet Professor of Physiology at Oxford, a post for which he had unsuccessfully applied in 1895, and here he remained until his retirement in 1936. Here he wrote, and published in 1919, his classic book entitled Mammalian Physiology: a Course of Practical Exercises, and here he regularly taught the students for whom this book was written.

In physique Sherrington was a well-built, but not very tall man with a strong constitution which enabled him to carry out prolonged researches.

During the First World War, as Chairman of the Industrial Fatigue Board, he worked for a time in a shell factory at Birmingham, and the daily shift of 13 hours, with a Sunday shift of 9 hours, did not, at the age of 57, tire him. From his early years he was short-sighted, but he often worked without spectacles.

The predominant notes of his character as a man were his humility and friendliness and the generosity with which he gave to others his advice and valuable time. An interesting feature of him is that he published, in 1925, a book of verse entitled The Assaying of Brabantius and other Verse, which caused one reviewer to hope that "Miss Sherrington" would publish more verse. He was also sensitive to the music of prose, and this and the poet in him, but also the biologist and philosopher, were evident in his Rede Lecture at Cambridge in 1933 on The Brain and its Mechanism, in which he denied our scientific right to join mental with physiological experience.

The philosopher in him ultimately found expression in his great book, Man on his Nature, which was the published title of the Gifford Lectures for 1937-1938, which Sherrington gave. As is well known, this book, published in 1940, centres round the life and views of the 16th century French physician Jean Fernel and round Sherrington's own views. In 1946 Sherrington published another volume entitled The Endeavour of Jean Fernel.

Sherrington was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of London in 1893, where he gave the Croonian Lecture in 1897, and was awarded the Royal Medal in 1905 and the Copley Medal in 1927. In 1922 the Knight Grand Cross of the Order of the British Empire and in 1924 the Order of Merit were conferred upon him. He held honorary doctorates of the Universities of Oxford, London, Sheffield, Birmingham, Manchester, Liverpool, Wales, Edinburgh, Glasgow, Paris, Strasbourg, Louvain, Uppsala, Lyons, Budapest, Athens, Brussels, Berne, Toronto, Montreal, and Harvard.

As a boy and a young man Sherrington was a notable athlete both at Queen Elizabeth's School, Ipswich, where he went in 1871, and later at Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge, for which College he rowed and played rugby football; he was also a pioneer of winter sports at Grindelwald.

In 1892 Sherrington married Ethel Mary, daughter of John Ely Wright, of Preston Manor, Suffolk. After some years of frail health, during which, however, he remained mentally very alert, he died suddenly of heart failure at Eastbourne in 1952.

This autobiography/biography was written at the time of the award and first published in the book series Les Prix Nobel. It was later edited and republished inNobel Lectures. To cite this document, always state the source as shown above.
Sir Charles Sherrington died on March 4, 1952.

To cite this section
MLA style: Sir Charles Sherrington - Biographical. NobelPrize.org. Nobel Prize Outreach AB 2022. Fri. 22 Apr 2022. <https://www.nobelprize.org/prizes/medicine/1932/sherrington/biographical/>

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The Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine 1932

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C harles Scott Sherrington was born on November 27, 1857, at Islington, London. He was the son of James Norton Sherrington, of Caister, Great Yarmouth, who died when Sherrington was a young child.

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The Young-Hemholtz Trichromatic Theory of Vision

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The Young-Hemholtz Trichromatic Theory of Vision

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In the year 1801, Thomas Young demonstrated that light was composed of waves, and approximated the seven wavelengths of the color of the rainbow¹. Teaming up with Hermann von Helmholtz, they developed the trichromatic theory that cells in the eye preferred one of three wavelengths; red, green, or blue². This theory is true, even to this day, and the theory that the colors that these cells obtained were red, green, and blue, held up for almost two centuries, until 1956 when it was slightly tweaked, which will be discussed later in the next exhibit.

Sources:

https://study.com/academy/lesson/young-helmholtzs-trichromatic-theory-of-color-vision.html (video)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Young%E2%80%93Helmholtz_theory

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1803 - John Dalton studies color blindness

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1803 - John Dalton studies color blindness

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John Dalton always have a particular inkling to study color-blindness because his brother happened to be color blind and he was interested in how it worked. He researched how the  shortage in color perception was caused by a discoloration of the aqueous humor in the pupil¹.

Protanopia is often called Daltonism because of his work in describing the red-green color deficiency throughout his life, and he is also very well-known today for his work in atomic theory².

Sources:

https://www.bondeye.com/advancements-color-blindness/#:~:text=In%201803%20John%20Dalton%20was,the%20eyeball%20called%20aqueous%20humor.

https://www.medicinenet.com/daltonism/definition.htm

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Theory of Colors: Pioneering Color Opponency

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Theory of Colors: Pioneering Color Opponency

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Theory of Colors, a book written in 1810 by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, set the precedent and heavily inspired Hermann von Helmholtz in his journey of the science of color vision and the mechanics of the retina. Helmholtz read and admired Theory of Colors, which was Wolfgang von Goethe's poetic views on the relationships between colors and nature and how these colors are perceived by humans¹.

Goethe was the first to arrange the colors in the color wheel symmetrically, and noticed that the colors opposite to one another demanded the opposite's presence in the eye².

Sources:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theory_of_Colours

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opponent_process

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Theory of Colours (German: Zur Farbenlehre [tsuːɐ̯ ˈfaʁbn̩ˌleːʁə]) is a book by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe about the poet's views on the nature of colours and how these are perceived by humans. It was published in German in 1810 and in English in 1840. The book contains detailed descriptions of phenomena such as coloured shadows, refraction, and chromatic aberration.

The work originated in Goethe's occupation with painting and mainly exerted an influence on the arts ( Philipp Otto Runge, J. M. W. Turner, the Pre-Raphaelites, Hilma af Klint, Wassily Kandinsky). The book is a successor to two short essays entitled "Contributions to Optics".

Although Goethe's work was rejected by some physicists, a number of philosophers and physicists have concerned themselves with it, including Thomas Johann Seebeck, Arthur Schopenhauer (see: On Vision and Colors), Hermann von Helmholtz, Rudolf Steiner, Ludwig Wittgenstein, Werner Heisenberg, Kurt Gödel, and Mitchell Feigenbaum.

Goethe's book provides a catalogue of how colour is perceived in a wide variety of circumstances, and considers Isaac Newton's observations to be special cases. Unlike Newton, Goethe's concern was not so much with the analytic treatment of colour, as with the qualities of how phenomena are perceived. Philosophers have come to understand the distinction between the optical spectrum, as observed by Newton, and the phenomenon of human colour perception as presented by Goethe-a subject analyzed at length by Wittgenstein in his comments on Goethe's theory in Remarks on Colour.

At Goethe's time, it was generally acknowledged that, as Isaac Newton had shown in his in 1704, colourless (white) light is split up into its component colours when directed through a prism.

Along with the rest of the world I was convinced that all the colours are contained in the light; no one had ever told me anything different, and I had never found the least cause to doubt it, because I had no further interest in the subject.

Goethe's starting point was the supposed discovery of how Newton erred in the prismatic experiment, and by 1793 Goethe had formulated his arguments against Newton in the essay "Über Newtons Hypothese der diversen Refrangibilität" ("On Newton's hypothesis of diverse refrangibility"). Yet, by 1794, Goethe had begun to increasingly note the importance of the physiological aspect of colours.

As Goethe notes in the historical section, Louis Bertrand Castel had already published a criticism of Newton's spectral description of prismatic colour in 1740 in which he observed that the sequence of colours split by a prism depended on the distance from the prism-and that Newton was looking at a special case.

"Whereas Newton observed the colour spectrum cast on a wall at a fixed distance away from the prism, Goethe observed the cast spectrum on a white card which was progressively moved away from the prism... As the card was moved away, the projected image elongated, gradually assuming an elliptical shape, and the coloured images became larger, finally merging at the centre to produce green. Moving the card farther led to the increase in the size of the image, until finally the spectrum described by Newton in the Opticks was produced... The image cast by the refracted beam was not fixed, but rather developed with increasing distance from the prism. Consequently, Goethe saw the particular distance chosen by Newton to prove the second proposition of the Opticks as capriciously imposed." (Alex Kentsis, Between Light and Eye)

In the preface to the Theory of Colours, Goethe explained that he tried to apply the principle of polarity, in the work-a proposition that belonged to his earliest convictions and was constitutive of his entire study of nature.

Goethe's theory

Goethe's theory of the constitution of colours of the spectrum has not proved to be an unsatisfactory theory, rather it really isn't a theory at all. Nothing can be predicted with it. It is, rather a vague schematic outline of the sort we find in James's psychology. Nor is there any experimentum crucis which could decide for or against the theory.

It is hard to present Goethe's "theory", since he refrains from setting up any actual theory; he says, "its intention is to portray rather than explain" ( Scientific Studies). Instead of setting up models and explanations, Goethe collected specimens-he was responsible for the meteorological collections of Jena University. By the time of his death, he had amassed over 17,800 minerals in his personal collection-the largest in all of Europe. He took the same approach to colour-instead of narrowing and isolating things to a single 'experimentum crucis' (or critical experiment that would prove or disprove his theory), he sought to gain as much breadth for his understanding as possible by developing a wide-ranging exposition through which is revealed the essential character of colour-without having to resort to explanations and theories about perceived phenomena such as 'wavelengths' or 'particles'.

"The crux of his color theory is its experiential source: rather than impose theoretical statements, Goethe sought to allow light and color to be displayed in an ordered series of experiments that readers could experience for themselves." (Seamon, 1998). According to Goethe, "Newton's error.. was trusting math over the sensations of his eye." (Jonah Lehrer, 2006).

To stay true to the perception without resort to explanation was the essence of Goethe's method. What he provided was really not so much a theory, as a rational description of colour. For Goethe, "the highest is to understand that all fact is really theory. The blue of the sky reveals to us the basic law of color. Search nothing beyond the phenomena, they themselves are the theory."

[Goethe] delivered in full measure what was promised by the title of his excellent work: Data for a Theory of Color. They are important, complete, and significant data, rich material for a future theory of color. He has not, however, undertaken to furnish the theory itself; hence, as he himself remarks and admits on page xxxix of the introduction, he has not furnished us with a real explanation of the essential nature of color, but really postulates it as a phenomenon, and merely tells us how it originates, not what it is. The physiological colors ... he represents as a phenomenon, complete and existing by itself, without even attempting to show their relation to the physical colors, his principal theme. ... it is really a systematic presentation of facts, but it stops short at this.

Goethe outlines his method in the essay, The experiment as mediator between subject and object (1772). It underscores his experiential standpoint. "The human being himself, to the extent that he makes sound use of his senses, is the most exact physical apparatus that can exist." (Goethe, Scientific Studies)

I believe that what Goethe was really seeking was not a physiological but a psychological theory of colours.

Unlike his contemporaries, Goethe didn't see darkness as an absence of light, but rather as polar to and interacting with light; colour resulted from this interaction of light and shadow. For Goethe, light is "the simplest most undivided most homogeneous being that we know. Confronting it is the darkness" (Letter to Jacobi).

...they maintained that shade is a part of light. It sounds absurd when I express it; but so it is: for they said that colours, which are shadow and the result of shade, are light itself.

Based on his experiments with turbid media, Goethe characterized colour as arising from the dynamic interplay of darkness and light. Rudolf Steiner, the science editor for the Kurschner edition of Goethe's works, gave the following analogy:

Goethe expresses this more succinctly:

[..] white that becomes darkened or dimmed inclines to yellow; black, as it becomes lighter, inclines to blue.

In other words: Yellow is a light which has been dampened by darkness; Blue is a darkness weakened by light.

The action of turbid media was to Goethe the ultimate fact-the Urphänomen-of the world of colours.

Goethe's studies of colour began with experiments which examined the effects of turbid media, such as air, dust, and moisture on the perception of light and dark. The poet observed that light seen through a turbid medium appears yellow, and darkness seen through an illuminated medium appears blue.

The highest degree of light, such as that of the sun... is for the most part colourless. This light, however, seen through a medium but very slightly thickened, appears to us yellow. If the density of such a medium be increased, or if its volume become greater, we shall see the light gradually assume a yellow-red hue, which at last deepens to a ruby colour. If on the other hand darkness is seen through a semi-transparent medium, which is itself illumined by a light striking on it, a blue colour appears: this becomes lighter and paler as the density of the medium is increased, but on the contrary appears darker and deeper the more transparent the medium becomes: in the least degree of dimness short of absolute transparence, always supposing a perfectly colourless medium, this deep blue approaches the most beautiful violet.

-  Goethe, Theory of Colours, pp. 150-151

He then proceeds with numerous experiments, systematically observing the effects of rarefied mediums such as dust, air, and moisture on the perception of colour.

When viewed through a prism, the orientation of a light-dark boundary with respect to the prism's axis is significant. With white above a dark boundary, we observe the light extending a blue-violet edge into the dark area; whereas dark above a light boundary results in a red-yellow edge extending into the light area.

Goethe was intrigued by this difference. He felt that this arising of colour at light-dark boundaries was fundamental to the creation of the spectrum (which he considered to be a compound phenomenon).

Varying the experimental conditions by using different shades of grey shows that the intensity of coloured edges increases with boundary contrast.

Since the colour phenomenon relies on the adjacency of light and dark, there are two ways to produce a spectrum: with a light beam in a dark room, and with a dark beam (i.e., a shadow) in a light room.

Goethe recorded the sequence of colours projected at various distances from a prism for both cases (see Plate IV, Theory of Colours). In both cases, he found that the yellow and blue edges remain closest to the side which is light, and red and violet edges remain closest to the side which is dark. At a certain distance, these edges overlap-and we obtain Newton's spectrum. When these edges overlap in a light spectrum, green results; when they overlap in a dark spectrum, magenta results.

With a light spectrum (i.e. a shaft of light in a surrounding darkness), we find yellow-red colours along the top edge, and blue-violet colours along the bottom edge. The spectrum with green in the middle arises only where the blue-violet edges overlap the yellow-red edges. Unfortunately an optical mixture of blue and yellow gives white, not green, and so Goethe's explanation of Newton's spectrum fails.

With a dark spectrum (i.e., a shadow surrounded by light), we find violet-blue along the top edge, and red-yellow along the bottom edge-and where these edges overlap, we find (extraspectral) magenta.

Olaf Müller presented the matter in the following way, "According to Newton, all spectral colors are contained in white sunlight, according to Goethe, the opposite can be said - that all colors of the complementary spectrum are contained in the dark." [1]

Goethe's colour wheel

When the eye sees a colour it is immediately excited and it is its nature, spontaneously and of necessity, at once to produce another, which with the original colour, comprehends the whole chromatic scale.

-  Goethe, Theory of Colours

Goethe anticipated Ewald Hering's Opponent process theory by proposing a symmetric colour wheel. He writes, "The chromatic circle... [is] arranged in a general way according to the natural order... for the colours diametrically opposed to each other in this diagram are those which reciprocally evoke each other in the eye. Thus, yellow demands violet; orange [demands] blue; purple [demands] green; and vice versa: thus... all intermediate gradations reciprocally evoke each other; the simpler colour demanding the compound, and vice versa ( paragraph #50).

In the same way that light and dark spectra yielded green from the mixture of blue and yellow-Goethe completed his colour wheel by recognising the importance of magenta-"For Newton, only spectral colors could count as fundamental. By contrast, Goethe's more empirical approach led him to recognize the essential role of magenta in a complete color circle, a role that it still has in all modern color systems."

Goethe also included aesthetic qualities in his colour wheel, under the title of "allegorical, symbolic, mystic use of colour" ( Allegorischer, symbolischer, mystischer Gebrauch der Farbe), establishing a kind of color psychology. He associated red with the "beautiful", orange with the "noble", yellow to the "good", green to the "useful", blue to the "common", and violet to the "unnecessary". These six qualities were assigned to four categories of human cognition, the rational ( Vernunft) to the beautiful and the noble (red and orange), the intellectual ( Verstand) to the good and the useful (yellow and green), the sensual ( Sinnlichkeit) to the useful and the common (green and blue) and, closing the circle, imagination ( Phantasie) to both the unnecessary and the beautiful (purple and red).

Notes on translation

Magenta appeared as a colour term only in the mid-nineteenth century, after Goethe. Hence, references to Goethe's recognition of magenta are fraught with interpretation. If one observes the colours coming out of a prism-an English person may be more inclined to describe as magenta what in German is called Purpur -so one may not lose the intention of the author.

However, literal translation is more difficult. Goethe's work uses two composite words for mixed (intermediate) hues along with corresponding usual colour terms such as "orange" and "violet".

It is not clear how Goethe's Rot, Purpur (explicitly named as the complementary to green), and Schön (one of the six colour sectors) are related between themselves and to the red tip of the visible spectrum. The text about interference from the "physical" chapter does not consider Rot and Purpur synonymous. Also, Purpur is certainly distinct from Blaurot, because Purpur is named as a colour which lies somewhere between Blaurot and Gelbrot (, paragraph 476), although possibly not adjacent to the latter. This article uses the English translations from the above table.

Ernst Lehrs writes, "In point of fact, the essential difference between Goethe's theory of colour and the theory which has prevailed in science (despite all modifications) since Newton's day, lies in this: While the theory of Newton and his successors was based on excluding the colour-seeing faculty of the eye, Goethe founded his theory on the eye's experience of colour."

"The renouncing of life and immediacy, which was the premise for the progress of natural science since Newton, formed the real basis for the bitter struggle which Goethe waged against the physical optics of Newton. It would be superficial to dismiss this struggle as unimportant: there is much significance in one of the most outstanding men directing all his efforts to fighting against the development of Newtonian optics." ( Werner Heisenberg, during a speech celebrating Goethe's birthday)

Due to their different approaches to a common subject, many misunderstandings have arisen between Newton's mathematical understanding of optics, and Goethe's experiential approach.

Because Newton understands white light to be composed of individual colours, and Goethe sees colour arising from the interaction of light and dark, they come to different conclusions on the question: is the optical spectrum a primary or a compound phenomenon?

For Newton, the prism is immaterial to the existence of colour, as all the colours already exist in white light, and the prism merely fans them out according to their refrangibility. Goethe sought to show that, as a turbid medium, the prism was an integral factor in the arising of colour.

Whereas Newton narrowed the beam of light in order to isolate the phenomenon, Goethe observed that with a wider aperture, there was no spectrum. He saw only reddish-yellow edges and blue-cyan edges with white between them, and the spectrum arose only where these edges came close enough to overlap. For him, the spectrum could be explained by the simpler phenomena of colour arising from the interaction of light and dark edges.

Newton explains the appearance of white with colored edges by saying that due to the differing overall amount of refraction, the rays mix together to create a full white towards the centre, whereas the edges do not benefit from this full mixture and appear with greater red or blue components. For Newton's account of his experiments, see his (1704).

Goethe's reification of darkness is rejected by modern physics. Both Newton and Huygens defined darkness as an absence of light. Young and Fresnel showed that Huygens' wave theory (in his Treatise on Light) could explain that colour is the visible manifestation of light's wavelength. Physicists today attribute both a corpuscular and undulatory character to light-comprising the wave-particle duality.

The first edition of the Farbenlehre was printed at the Cotta'schen Verlagsbuchhandlung on May 16, 1810, with 250 copies on grey paper and 500 copies on white paper. It contained three sections: i) a didactic section in which Goethe presents his own observations, ii) a polemic section in which he makes his case against Newton, and iii) a historical section.

From its publication, the book was controversial for its stance against Newton. So much so, that when Charles Eastlake translated the text into English in 1840, he omitted the content of Goethe's polemic against Newton.

Goethe was initially induced to occupy himself with the study of colour by the questions of hue in painting. "During his first journey to Italy (1786-88), he noticed that artists were able to enunciate rules for virtually all the elements of painting and drawing except color and coloring. In the years 1786-88, Goethe began investigating whether one could ascertain rules to govern the artistic use of color."

This aim came to some fulfillment when several pictorial artists, above all Philipp Otto Runge, took an interest in his colour studies. After being translated into English by Charles Eastlake in 1840, the theory became widely adopted by the art world-especially among the Pre-Raphaelites. J. M. W. Turner studied it comprehensively and referenced it in the titles of several paintings. Wassily Kandinsky considered it "one of the most important works."

During a party in Weimar in the winter of 1785, Goethe had a late-night conversation with the South American revolutionary Francisco de Miranda. In a letter written to Count Semyon Romanovich Vorontsov (1792), Miranda recounted how Goethe, fascinated with his exploits throughout the Americas and Europe, told him, "Your destiny is to create in your land a place where primary colours are not distorted." He proceeded to clarify what he meant:

First he explained to me the way the iris transforms the light into the three primary colours... then he said, "Why yellow is the most warm, noble and closest to the bright light; why Blue is that mix of excitement and serenity, so far that it evokes the shadows; and why Red is the exaltation of Yellow and Blue, the synthesis, the vanishing of the bright light into the shadows".[better source needed ]

In the nineteenth century Goethe's Theory was taken up by Schopenhauer in On Vision and Colors, who developed it into a kind of arithmetical physiology of the action of the retina, much in keeping with his own representative idealism ["The world is my representation or idea"].

In the twentieth century the theory was transmitted to philosophy via Wittgenstein, who devoted a series of remarks to the subject at the end of his life. These remarks are collected as Remarks on Colour, (Wittgenstein, 1977).

Someone who agrees with Goethe finds that Goethe correctly recognized the nature of colour. And here 'nature' does not mean a sum of experiences with respect to colours, but it is to be found in the concept of colour.

-  Aphorism 125, Ludwig Wittgenstein, Remarks on Color, 1992

Wittgenstein was interested in the fact that some propositions about colour are apparently neither empirical nor exactly a priori, but something in between: phenomenology, according to Goethe. However, Wittgenstein took the line that 'There is no such thing as phenomenology, though there are phenomenological problems.' He was content to regard Goethe's observations as a kind of logic or geometry. Wittgenstein took his examples from the Runge letter included in the "Farbenlehre", e.g. "White is the lightest colour", "There cannot be a transparent white", "There cannot be a reddish green", and so on. The logical status of these propositions in Wittgenstein's investigation, including their relation to physics, has been discussed in Jonathan Westphal's Colour: a Philosophical Introduction (Westphal, 1991).

During Goethe's lifetime (that is, between 1810 and 1832) countless scientists and mathematicians commented on Goethe's Newton criticism in color theory, namely in reviews, books, book chapters, footnotes, open letters. A large plurality of these votes (just under half) spoke against Goethe, especially Thomas Young, Louis Malus, Pierre Prévost and Gustav Theodor Fechner. One third of the statements from the natural sciences were in favour of Goethe, in particular Thomas Johann Seebeck, Johann Salomo Christoph Schweigger and Johann Friedrich Christian Werneburg, and one-fifth expressed ambivalence or a draw.

As early as 1853, in Hermann von Helmholtz's lecture on Goethe's scientific works-he says of Goethe's work that he depicts the perceived phenomena-"circumstantially, rigorously true to nature, and vividly puts them in an order that is pleasant to survey, and proves himself here, as everywhere in the realm of the factual, to be the great master of exposition" (Helmholtz 1853). Helmholtz ultimately rejects Goethe's theory as the work of a poet, but expresses his perplexity at how they can be in such agreement about the facts of the matter, but in violent contradiction about their meaning-'And I for one do not know how anyone, regardless of what his views about colours are, can deny that the theory in itself is fully consequent, that its assumptions, once granted, explain the facts treated completely and indeed simply'. (Helmholtz 1853)

Although the accuracy of Goethe's observations does not admit a great deal of criticism, his aesthetic approach did not lend itself to the demands of analytic and mathematical analysis used ubiquitously in modern science.

Goethe's colour theory has in many ways borne fruit in art, physiology and aesthetics. But victory, and hence influence on the research of the following century, has been Newton's.

-  Werner Heisenberg, 1952

"One hole Goethe did find in Newton's armour, through which he incessantly worried the Englishman with his lance. Newton had committed himself to the doctrine that refraction without colour was impossible. He therefore thought that the object-glasses of telescopes must for ever remain imperfect, achromatism and refraction being incompatible. This inference was proved by Dollond to be wrong... Here, as elsewhere, Goethe proves himself master of the experimental conditions. It is the power of interpretation that he lacks."

Much controversy stems from two different ways of investigating light and colour. Goethe was not interested in Newton's analytic treatment of colour-but he presented an excellent rational description of the phenomenon of human colour perception. It is as such a collection of colour observations that we must view this book.

Most of Goethe's explanations of color have been thoroughly demolished, but no criticism has been leveled at his reports of the facts to be observed; nor should any be. This book can lead the reader through a demonstration course not only in subjectively produced colors (after images, light and dark adaptation, irradiation, colored shadows, and pressure phosphenes), but also in physical phenomena detectable qualitatively by observation of color (absorption, scattering, refraction, diffraction, polarization, and interference). A reader who attempts to follow the logic of Goethe's explanations and who attempts to compare them with the currently accepted views might, even with the advantage of 1970 sophistication, become convinced that Goethe's theory, or at least a part of it, has been dismissed too quickly.

Mitchell Feigenbaum came to believe that "Goethe had been right about colour!"

As Feigenbaum understood them, Goethe's ideas had true science in them. They were hard and empirical. Over and over again, Goethe emphasized the repeatability of his experiments. It was the perception of colour, to Goethe, that was universal and objective. What scientific evidence was there for a definable real-world quality of redness independent of our perception?

"Newton believed that with the help of his prism experiments, he could prove that sunlight was composed of variously coloured rays of light. Goethe showed that this step from observation to theory is more problematic than Newton wanted to admit. By insisting that the step to theory is not forced upon us by the phenomena, Goethe revealed our own free, creative contribution to theory construction. And Goethe's insight is surprisingly significant, because he correctly claimed that all of the results of Newton's prism experiments fit a theoretical alternative equally well.. a century before Duhem and Quine's famous arguments for Underdetermination."

"Goethe's critique of Newton was not an attack on reason or science, though it has often been portrayed that way.. The critique maintained that Newton had mistaken mathematical imagining as the pure evidence of the senses.. Goethe tried to define the scientific function of imagination: to interrelate phenomena once they have been meticulously produced, described, and organized... Newton had introduced dogma.. into color science by claiming that color could be reduced to a function of rays." (Dennis L. Sepper, 2009)

"Although he soon rejected Newton's differential refrangibility, Goethe always affirmed Newtonian mechanics. It was not an apriori poetic prejudice against mathematical analysis but rather performing the experiments that led him to reject the theory... Goethe soon concluded that in order to explain color one needs to know not just about light but also about eye function and relative differences in light across the visual field." (Sepper, 2009)

As a catalogue of observations, Goethe's experiments probe the complexities of human colour perception. Whereas Newton sought to develop a mathematical model for the behaviour of light, Goethe focused on exploring how colour is perceived in a wide array of conditions. Developments in understanding how the brain interprets colours, such as colour constancy and Edwin H. Land's retinex theory bear striking similarities to Goethe's theory.

A modern treatment of the book is given by Dennis L. Sepper in the book, Goethe contra Newton: Polemics and the Project for a New Science of Color (Cambridge University Press, 2003).

As to what I have done as a poet... I take no pride in it... but that in my century I am the only person who knows the truth in the difficult science of colours-of that, I say, I am not a little proud, and here I have a consciousness of a superiority to many.

[Goethe] delivered in full measure what was promised by the title of his excellent work: data toward a theory of colour. They are important, complete, and significant data, rich material for a future theory of colour. He has not, however, undertaken to furnish the theory itself; hence, as he himself remarks and admits on page xxxix of the introduction, he has not furnished us with a real explanation of the essential nature of colour, but really postulates it as a phenomenon, and merely tells us how it originates, not what it is.

Goethe's theory of the origin of the spectrum isn't a theory of its origin that has proved unsatisfactory; it is really not a theory at all. Nothing can be predicted by means of it. It is, rather, a vague schematic outline, of the sort we find in James's psychology. There is no experimentum crucis for Goethe's theory of colour.

Can you lend me the Theory of Colours for a few weeks? It is an important work. His last things are insipid.

Should your glance on mornings lovely
Lift to drink the heaven's blue
Or when sun, veiled by sirocco,
Royal red sinks out of view -
Give to Nature praise and honor.
Blithe of heart and sound of eye,
Knowing for the world of colour

Where its broad foundations lie.

Aber wie verwundert war ich, als die durch's Prisma angeschaute weiße Wand nach wie vor weiß blieb, daß nur da, wo ein Dunkles dran stieß, sich eine mehr oder weniger entschiedene Farbe zeigte, daß zuletzt die Fensterstäbe am allerlebhaftesten farbig erschienen, indessen am lichtgrauen Himmel draußen keine Spur von Färbung zu sehen war. Es bedurfte keiner langen Überlegung, so erkannte ich, daß eine Gränze nothwendig sey, um Farben hervorzubringen, und ich sprach wie durch einen Instinct sogleich vor mich laut aus, daß die Newtonische Lehre falsch sey.

But I was astonished, as I looked at a white wall through the prism, how it stayed white! That only there where it came upon some darkened area, it showed more or less some colour, then at last, around the window bars all the colours shone, whereas in the light grey sky outside there was no colour to be seen. It didn't take long before I knew that a border was required for colour to be brought forth, and I spoke as through an instinct out loud, that the Newtonian teachings were false.

-  Goethe, Goethes Werke, Weimar: Hermann Böhlau, 1887-1919, II. Abtheilung: Naturwissenschaftlichte Schriften, Bd. 4, pp. 295-296

1. Goethe's Theory of Colours: Translated from the German; with Notes by Charles Lock Eastlake, R.A., F.R.S. London: John Murray. 1840. Archived from the original on 12 December 2016 - via Internet Archive.

2. ^ Neil Ribe, Friedrich Steinle: Exploratory Experimentation: Goethe, Land, and Color Theory Physics Today, July 2002, retrieved July 3, 2011

3. Karl Robert Mandelkow: Goethes Briefe (^ Goethe's Letters). 2. edition. Vol. 2: Briefe der Jahre 1786-1805 (Letters of the years 1786-1805). Christian Wegner publishers, Hamburg 1968, p. 528. "das zentrale Axiom von Newtons Farbentheorie, daß in dem weißen, farblosen Licht alle Farben enthalten seien" ("the central axiom of Newton's colour theory that there were all colours in the white, colourless light")

4. ^ Goethe, Goethes Werke, Weimar: Hermann Böhlau, 1887-1919, II. Abtheilung: Naturwissenschaftlichte Schriften, Bd. 4, pp. 295-296

5. Matthaei, Rupprecht. Über die Anfänge von Goethes Farbenlehre (^ On the beginnings of Goethe's Theory of Colours). In: Jahrbuch der Goethe-Gesellschaft (Yearbook of the Goethe Society) 11, 1949, p. 259, cited in Karl Robert Mandelkow: Goethes Briefe (Goethe's Letters). 2. edition. Vol. 2: Briefe der Jahre 1786-1805 (Letters of the years 1786-1805). Christian Wegner publishers, Hamburg 1968, p. 553. "Goethes Ausgangspunkt, die Entdeckung des Newtonschen Irrtums, wie er es nannte, im prismatischen Versuch, schwand ihm aus dem Blickfeld in dem Maße, als er die Bedeutung der Physiologischen Farben zu ahnen begann." ("Goethe's starting point, the discovery of the Newton error, as he called it, in the prismatic experiment, dwindled from his horizon according to how he began to sense the meaning of the Physiological Colours.")

6. Karl Robert Mandelkow: Goethes Briefe (^ Goethe's Letters). 2. edition. Vol. 2: Briefe der Jahre 1786-1805 (Letters of the years 1786-1805). Christian Wegner publishers, Hamburg 1968, p. 528. "Bereits 1793 hat Goethe seine Einwände gegen Newton formuliert in dem Aufsatz Über Newtons Hypothese der diversen Refrangibilität (...)." ("Already in 1793, Goethe formulated his arguments against Newton in the essay Über Newtons Hypothese der diversen Refrangibilität [...].")

7. Karl Robert Mandelkow: Goethes Briefe (^ Goethe's Letters). 2. edition. Vol. 2: Briefe der Jahre 1786-1805 (Letters of the years 1786-1805). Christian Wegner publishers, Hamburg 1968, p. 553. "Diese Wendung ist bereits angedeutet in Goethes Briefentwurf an Sömmerring vom Januar/Februar 1794, der Antwort auf Sömmerrings Brief an Goethe vom 18. Januar 1794 (...): Es ist weit mehr Physiologisches bei den Farbenerscheinungen, als man denkt, nur ist hier die Schwierigkeit noch größer als in andern Fällen, das Objektive vom Subjektiven zu unterscheiden." (Italics mark citations that may only slightly have been adapted to the descriptive sentence regarding the grammar.) Translation: "This change is already indicated in Goethe's draft for a letter to Sömmerring from January/February 1794, the answer to Sömmerring's letter from January 18, 1794 (...): There is much more physiological with the phenomena of colours than one would think, just that it is even more difficult, here, to distinguish between the objective and the subjective." The letter is cited by Mandelkow after: Goethe, Die Schriften zur Naturwissenschaft. Herausgegeben im Auftrage der Deutschen Akademie der Naturforscher (Leopoldina) zu Halle von R. Matthaei, W. Troll und L. Wolf. Weimar 1949 ff (Goethe, The writings on sciences. Edited on behalf of the German Academy of Sciences Leopoldina at Halle by R. Matthaei, W. Troll and L. Wolf. Weimar 1949 et seq.) See: Samuel Thomas von Sömmerring

8. Karl Robert Mandelkow: Goethes Briefe (^ Goethe's Letters). 2. edition. Vol. 2: Briefe der Jahre 1786-1805 (Letters of the years 1786-1805). Christian Wegner publishers, Hamburg 1968, p. 528. "Die Lehre dagegen, die wir mit Überzeugung aufstellen, beginnt zwar auch mit dem farblosen Lichte, sie bedient sich äußerer Bedingungen, um farbige Erscheinungen hervorzubringen; sie gesteht aber diesen Bedingungen Wert und Würde zu. Sie maßt sich nicht an, Farben aus dem Licht zu entwickeln, sie sucht vielmehr durch unzählige Fälle darzutun, dass die Farbe zugleich von dem Lichte und von dem, was sich ihm entgegenstellt, hervorgebracht werde."

9. Karl Robert Mandelkow: Goethes Briefe (^ Goethe's Letters). 2. edition. Vol. 2: Briefe der Jahre 1786-1805 (Letters of the years 1786-1805). Christian Wegner publishers, Hamburg 1968, p. 530. "Das für Goethes gesamte Naturbetrachtung konstitutive Prinzip der Polarität gehört zu seinen frühesten Überzeugungen..., an denen er niemals irre geworden sei (Brief an Schweigger, 25. April 1814). Im Vorwort zur Farbenlehre wird es als Hauptabsicht des gegenwärtigen Werkes bezeichnet, dieses universelle Prinzip auch auf die Farbenlehre anzuwenden." (Italics mark citations that may only slightly have been adapted to the descriptive sentence regarding the grammar.) Translation: "The principle of polarity, that is constitutive for all of Goethe's study of nature, belongs to the earliest of his convictions..., that he had never lost faith in (letter to Schweigger, April 25, 1814). In the preface to the Theory of Colours, it is called the main intention of the work at hand to apply this universal principle also to the theory of colours." See Johann Schweigger

10. Goethe, Johann (October 1995). Miller, Douglas (ed.). "Scientific Studies (Goethe: The Collected Works, Vol. 12), p.57". Princeton University Press.

11. ^ Hamm, E. P. (2001). "Unpacking Goethe's Collections: The Public and the Private in Natural-Historical Collecting". The British Journal for the History of Science. 34 (3): 275-300. doi:10.1017/S0007087401004423. JSTOR 4028099.

12. Quoted in translation in: ^ Hughes, Peter (1992). "Performing Theory: Wittgenstein and the Trouble with Shakespeare". Comparative Criticism. 14: 85.

13. ^ Raymond, Elfie. "Faces of Philosophy - Elfie Raymond". Archived from the original on 2011-11-10.

14. ^ Steiner, Rudolf (1897). Goethe's World View, Chapter III The Phenomena of the World of Colors.(published in German as Goethe's Weltanschauung)"Rudolf Steiner Archive: Steiner Books GA006". Archived from the original on 2012-09-03.

15. Arthur Zajonc. "Goethe's Theory of Color and Scientific Intuition", ^ American Journal of Physics, Vol. 44, No. 4 April (1976): 3-4. 'This is of course in error since the green produced here is approximately spectral green, that is, pure green, not a mixture.' The point is that the optical mixing of the edge-spectra is additive, not subtractive.https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Color_mixing, and that there is no combination of yellows or blues that will produce the saturated green produced when the edge-spectra start to overlap.

16. ^ Goethe's Colour Theory Archived 2008-09-16 at the Wayback Machine. Webexhibits.org, retrieved July 3, 2011

17. Goethe, Johann Wolfgang von (1810). "1. Abteilung. Physiologische Farben". Zur Farbenlehre [Theory of Colours] (in German). Archived from the original on 2014-03-23.

18. ^ Goethe: Farbenkreis zur Symbolisierung des "menschlichen Geistes- und Seelenlebens". 1809 Archived 2011-06-03 at the Wayback Machine. Goethe und die Kunst. ed. Sabine Schulze. Stuttgart: Hatje 1994, p. 141. "Jeder Farbe wird eine menschliche Eigenschaft zugeordnet (...). Im inneren Ring: rot - 'schön', gelbrot - 'edel', gelb - 'gut', grün - 'nützlich', blau - 'gemein', blaurot - 'unnöthig'." ("Each colour, a human quality is attributed to [...]. In the inner ring: red - 'beautiful', orange - 'noble', yellow - 'good', green - 'useful', blue - 'mean', violet - 'unnecessary'.")

19. Goethe, Johann Wolfgang von (1810). "2. Abteilung. Physische Farben". Zur Farbenlehre [Theory of Colours] (in German). Archived from the original on 2014-07-14.

20. Lehrs, Ernst. ^ Man or Matter: Introduction to a Spiritual Understanding of Nature on the Basis of Goethe's Method of Training Observation and Thought Archived 2014-01-10 at the Wayback Machine, retrieved January 10, 2014

21. Ernst Lehrs, Man or Matter, Chapter II | ^ https://archive.org/stream/manormatter05641gut/elmom10p#page/n23/mode/2up

22. R. H. Stephenson, ^ Goethe's Conception of Knowledge and Science (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 1995)

23. ^ Opticks Or, A treatise of the Reflections, Refractions, Inflexions and Colours of Light, Also Two treatises of the Species and Magnitude of Curvilinear Figures (London, 1704) "Isaac Newton's Works". Archived from the original on 2012-10-08.

24. ^ "Handprint : Colormaking attributes". Archived from the original on 2009-05-31. | Bruce MacEvoy | Handprint.com | 2008

25. Sepper, Dennis L. | Goethe contra Newton: Polemics and the Project for a New Science of Color | Cambridge University Press | 2007 | ISBN 0-521-53132-2

26. Karl Robert Mandelkow: Goethes Briefe (^ Goethe's Letters). 2. edition. Vol. 4: Briefe der Jahre 1821-1832 (Letters of the years 1821-1832). C. H. Beck publishers, München 1976, p. 622. "Wie die Anfänge von Goethes Beschäftigung mit der Farbenlehre veranlaßt waren durch die Frage nach dem Kolorit in der Malerei (...), so war die Anteilnahme bildender Künstler an seinen Farbenstudien für Goethe eine hochwillkommene Bestätigung des von ihm Gewollten, wie er sie vor allem von Philipp Otto Runge erfahren hat." ("As the beginnings of Goethe's occupation with the theory of colours were induced by the question of hue in painting [...], the interest of pictorial artists in his colour studyings was a highly welcome acknowledgement of what he wanted, for him, which he above all received from Philipp Otto Runge.")

27. ^ Rowley, Alison (September-December 2002). "Kandinskii's theory of colour and Olesha's Envy". LookSmart FindArticles.

28. Serpa Erazo, Jorge, ^ Pañol de la Historia. Part 1, Section 1 (July 30, 2004). ISSN 1900-3447 (which is itself a summary of Ricardo Silva Romero's "La Bandera del Mundo." Archived 2007-08-12 at the Wayback Machine). Retrieved on 2008-12-02

29. ^ "Archived copy". Archived from the original on 2013-12-13. | Ludwig Wittgenstein | University of California Press | 1992

30. ^ Helmholtz, Hermann von. 1853. Goethes Vorahnungen kommender naturwissenschaftlicher Ideen. Berlin: Pastel. 1971. Philosophische Vortrdge und Aufsdtze. Ed. H. Horz and S. Wollgast. Berlin: Akademie-Verlag.

31. Popular Science Monthly/Volume 17/July 1880)^ "Popular Science Monthly Volume 17 July 1880". Archived from the original on 2014-05-29.

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Goethe, Theory of Colours, trans. Charles Lock Eastlake, Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1982. ISBN 0-262-57021-1

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# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Theory of Colours (German: Zur Farbenlehre [tsuːɐ̯ ˈfaʁbn̩ˌleːʁə]) is a book by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe about the poet's views on the nature of colours and how these are perceived by humans. It was published in German in 1810 and in English in 1840.

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A Swiss Ophthalmologist by the name of Johann Horner in 1837 was a profoundly productive medical expert when it came to diseases and disorders of the eye. He performed well over 2000 cataract surgeries in his lifetime and introduced certain aseptic techniques to this procedure¹.

Horner's publications in 1876 gave the first ever account of an explanation of Daltonism- a certain form of color-blindness. His pedigrees explained how colorblind grandfathers can pass down color-blindness to their grandsons and female carriers can express it after more than one generation2.

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Edwin Land, born in 1909, proposed a theory "based on the idea that color registration is carried out in the brain.¹" This theory is incredibly complex but the idea at its core is that different wavelengths of color have different ratios in the perception of the color that people have. The visual mechanisms take individual snapshots in the brain as the neurons fire in the brain, then comparing the averages of the longer wave photos with the averages of the shorter wave photos to produce the image¹.

Edwin Land was an American scientist and inventor, especially known for his Polaroid camera, a massive photography icon².

Sources:

https://dictionary.apa.org/retinex-theory

https://link.springer.com/referenceworkentry/10.1007/978-1-4419-8071-7_260#:~:text=Definition,the%20entire%20image%20controls%20appearances.

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Partners in Cr(eye)me: Ragnar Granit and George Wald

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Partners in Cr(eye)me: Ragnar Granit and George Wald

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George Wald played a crucial role in the success of Granit's team as Wald discovered that vitamin A is an important component in rhodopsin, a light-sensitive compound in the retina¹.

He focused for over thirty years in Harvard, from the 1930s to the 1960s, on how light affected this compound. Today, we focus on rhodopsin as it is a marker for early detection of several neurodegenerative diseases such as Alzheimer's².

Sources:

https://www.nobelprize.org/prizes/medicine/1967/wald/facts/

https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fnins.2020.00326/full#:~:text=Rhodopsin%20is%20a%20G%2Dprotein,monitoring%20of%20several%20neurodegenerative%20diseases.

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The Opponent Process is a theory that vision is the combined input from rods and cones that appear to act in an antagonistic manner¹. German physiologist Ewald Hering was the first to propose this theory in 1892. He taught this theory at the University of Leipzig in 1895, and at the University of Prague in 1870-95².

He proposed three types of receptors, each one capable of producing two responses to pairs of colors; yellow-blue, red-green, and black-white.

Sources:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opponent_process

https://www.britannica.com/biography/Ewald-Hering

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SEM of the newly discovered Campana celll

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Contemporary Discovery: The Campana Cell

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Contemporary Discovery: The Campana Cell

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As of last year, in October of 2021, researchers in Utah have discovered a new type of retinal ganglion cells, which they have called 'Campana cells' due to their shape. It is a retinal interneuron that "does not fit into any existing retinal cell classes¹. This discovery is significant, as it is essential for human physiology that every type of neuron and ganglion cell is identified to fully understand the human body. This new Campana cell resembles amacrine cells and may possibly release the inhibitory neurotransmitter glycine², meaning that this cell may play an atypical role in vision.

Discovered by a team led by Ning Tian, this new cell could be crucial in ophthalmologic discoveries in the future.

Sources:
https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.2104884118

https://healthcare.utah.edu/moran/news/2021/10/campana-cell-retina-discovery.php#:~:text=Moran%20Eye%20Center%20at%20the,in%20the%20chain%20of%20communication.