Feature
200 Years of Fresnel’s Legacy
A young French engineer of the Napoleonic era made a name for himself with his lifesaving lighthouse lens, but his mathematical genius underpins much of modern photonics.
A low-built lighthouse with a Fresnel lens, Lavezzi Islands, France (Fernbach Antal, iStock).
Augustin-Jean Fresnel may be the least celebrated inventor of today’s technological society. A sickly civil engineer who died young, he could not have envisioned the myriad ways his mathematical insights would be put to use: from cellphone towers to fiber optics, from computer animation and holography to solar-energy installations.
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