17/08/2025
Lippman
Have you heard about the scientist who introduced Marie Skłodowska to her future life partner and colleague Pierre Curie?
In his laboratory, inventor and Nobel Prize physicist Gabriel Lippmann supported a Polish student in her research, Marie Skłodowska. Lippmann introduced Marie to his collaborator in piezoelectricity, Pierre Curie. The couple would turn out to be one of the most Nobel Prize-awarded families ever.
Lippmann himself was a pioneer in early colour photography.
In February 1891, he announced to the Paris Academy of Sciences: "I have succeeded in obtaining the image of the spectrum with its colors on a photographic plate whereby the image remains fixed and can remain in daylight without deterioration."
His method was hard to use and never came into widespread use, but the feasibility of taking photographs in natural colours stimulated the desire for such technologies. Lippmann was awarded the 1908 physics prize for his method of producing colour photography.
Read more about his photographic method: https://bit.ly/3NG0V6K
Photo: Gabriel Lippmann in 1908. Library of Congress.
