Fresnel and the principle of interference

Abstract

Fresnel’s principle of interference per se received little attention from historians, who have usually limited their task to its application to diffraction and chromatic polarization.¹ Here, I intend to discuss two questions: 1) Fresnel’s innovations in the principle of interference and its applications, and 2) the role of the principle of interference in the establishment of the wave theory of light (this problem will be investigated in Ch. VIII). The main difficulty in solving the second problem is the necessity to isolate the response to the principle of interference from the response to Fresnel’s entire wave theory. First, we must exclude the impact of other components of his theory such as the theory of double refraction and that of reflection and refraction. Second, when examining the reception of the theory of interference, we must eliminate the influence of the Huygens-Fresnel principle and the concept of transverse waves. Only in this way will we be able to grasp how scientists reacted to the concept of interference itself.