1st Edition

A History of Spectroscopy

By Emile Biémont Copyright 2026
728 Pages 46 Color & 215 B/W Illustrations
by CRC Press

728 Pages 46 Color & 215 B/W Illustrations
by CRC Press

Understanding the nature of light is a fundamental question that has troubled mankind since antiquity. It took a great deal of speculation and study concerning the formation of the rainbow to formulate the right hypotheses to explain the iridescence observed when white light passes through raindrops or pieces of glass. For a long time, ancient philosophers were far more interested in the... Read more

Section I From Rainbow Colors to Laser Light

Chapter 1 Units and Conversion Factors 

Chapter 2 The Precursors of Spectroscopy

Chapter 3 The Contributions of the Master of Woolsthorpe  

Chapter 4 The First Spectroscopists and the Birth of Spectral Analysis  

Chapter 5 Prisms and Diffraction Gratings

Chapter 6 Interferometers and Fourier Transform Spectroscopy

Chapter 7 Spectral Lines and Series

Chapter 8 The Beginnings of Molecular Spectroscopy 

Chapter 9 The Sun, the Stars and their Spectra

Chapter 10 W. Huggins and the Pioneers of Celestial Spectroscopy  

Chapter 11 Laser Spectroscopy  

Section II From Laser Light to Synchrotron Radiation 

Chapter 12 Beyond the Visible: the Long Wavelengths 

Chapter 13 Microwave Spectroscopy 

Chapter 14 Astronomical Spectroscopy in the Infrared 

Chapter 15 Röntgen and X-ray Spectroscopy 

Chapter 16 The Spectrometry of γ-Rays 

Chapter 17 Raman Scattering and Spectroscopy 

Chapter 18 Structure of the Atom and Zeeman Effect

Chapter 19 Photoelectron Spectroscopy 

Chapter 20 Spectroscopy and the Stark Effect 

Chapter 21 The Hyperfine Structure of Spectral Lines

Chapter 22 Light Sources and Emissions in the UV

Chapter 23 Retrospective and perspectives  

Appendix A: Main abbreviations used in spectroscopy and appearing in this

work 685 

Appendix B: Life dates of key scientists mentioned in this work 691

 

Index of Subjects 

Index 

Biography

Emile Biémont is Honorary Research Director of the Belgian FNRS, Honorary professor of the University of Mons (Belgium) and Emeritus Member of the Royal Academy of Belgium. His fields of interest are atomic and molecular spectroscopy with applications in laser and plasma physics. In astrophysics, he has been involved in solar and stellar physics. Interested also by popularization of science, he has published more than 370 publications including 16 books.