Gabriel Lippmann

French physicist

• Born: August 16, 1845
• Birthplace: Hollerich, Luxembourg
• Died: July 13, 1921
• Place of death: At sea, en route from Canada to France

Lippmann is best known for the innovation that won him the 1908 Nobel Prize in Physics: a revolutionary color-photography process based on the interference phenomenon. His other inventions include the capillary electrometer and the coelostat.

Primary fields: Astronomy; photography; physics

Primary invention: Color photography plate (Lippman plate)

Early Life

Gabriel Jonas Lippmann (gah-bree-ehl joh-nahs lihp-mahn) was born in 1845 in Hollerich, Luxembourg, to French parents. His mother was from Alsace, and his father, who ran a tannery and glove factory, hailed from Lorraine. When Lippmann was a small boy, his parents moved the family to France and settled in Paris. He received his early education at home from his mother. In 1858, the thirteen-year-old Lippmann began studies at the Lycée Napoléon. He continued his studies at the École Normale, which he entered a decade later. While highly intelligent, Lippmann did not excel at school, as he focused only on the subjects that piqued his interest. When he took the government qualifying examination to become a teacher, he failed it.

While at the École Normale, he summarized articles originally written in German for the French chemistry and physics publication Annales de Chimie et de Physique. His translation work kept him abreast of the latest experimental work in electricity. Because of his linguistic skill and scientific knowledge, the French government appointed him to travel to Germany in 1873 as part of a mission to study methods of teaching science. In Heidelberg, Lippmann worked in the laboratory of physicist Gustav Kirchhoff, who was known for his research into electrical circuits, spectroscopy, and black-body radiation. There, Lippmann also worked with physiologist Wilhelm Kühne, who introduced him to an experiment in which a drop of mercury coated with sulfuric acid contracted when it was touched with an iron wire and recovered its original shape when the wire was removed. In 1874, the University of Heidelberg awarded Lippmann a doctorate in philosophy. While in Germany, Lippmann did additional work with Hermann von Helmholtz, a physics professor conducting research in electromagnetism at the University of Berlin.

Life’s Work

During his time abroad, Lippmann experimented with the mercury phenomenon Kühne had shown him. Lippman theorized that the observed behavior was the result of a connection between electric polarization and surface tension. From his research, he created a capillary electrometer. This exceptionally sensitive instrument, capable of detecting differences in electrical potential as small as one one-thousandth of a volt, measured potential using changes in the surface tension between mercury and dilute sulfuric acid within a small-diameter tube. In 1875, the Sorbonne in Paris awarded him a doctorate for his work. The following year, Lippmann published his findings that the phenomenon worked in reverse: Mechanically altering a drop of mercury coated in sulfuric acid affected the electrical charge between the two liquids.

In 1878, Lippmann joined the Faculté des Sciences, a laboratory in Paris. There, he became professor of mathematical physics in 1883. In 1886, the year he was admitted as a member of France’s prestigious Académie des Sciences, he became professor of experimental physics at the Faculté. He was subsequently appointed director of the laboratory, a position he held for the rest of his life. As director, he oversaw the transfer of the Faculté des Sciences when it became incorporated into the Sorbonne.

In 1891, in a short communication to the Académie des Sciences, Lippmann presented his process for the photographic reproduction of color based on the phenomenon of interference. He had developed the theory of the process as early as 1886 but had struggled with successful execution for years. He was still working to resolve problems with the photographic film’s variable sensitivity to different parts of the spectrum. In 1893, he was able to show the Académie photographs taken by Auguste and Louis Lumière that reproduced natural color using Lippmann’s method. In 1894, he published his complete theory.

In 1895, Lippmann made a valuable contribution to astronomy with the invention of the coelostat, a device used in photographing stars. At the time, instruments called siderostats were commonly employed to keep the image of a single star stationary despite the movement of the star itself; however, images of surrounding stars would rotate around a single point. Lippmann’s coelostat, which involved the use of a mirror and a machine that reproduced the Earth’s rotation, held the image of an entire area of sky immobile long enough for photographic exposure. Lippmann also invented a related device, the uranograph, which produced a photographic sky map with longitudes automatically printed on it.

Also in 1895, Lippmann proposed a method to eliminate the personal equation (an individual’s observational bias) in measuring time through photographic registration (the creation of visual records on rotating rolls of photographic paper). Two years later, he published on the use of the stroboscopic method to compare the oscillations of two pendulums. In 1901, he wrote of a new form of galvanometer (an instrument for measuring the intensity of an electric current). Lippmann would later write on another field, seismology. He proposed the use of telegraphy to detect and measure earthquakes, and he devised a new form of seismograph that would measure acceleration.

In 1908, Lippmann was elected as a Foreign Member of the Royal Society of London. That same year, he was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics for his method of reproducing colors in photography based on the interference phenomenon. In 1912, he was elected president of the Académie des Sciences. Other organizations with which he was associated during his career include France’s Institut d’Optique Théorique et Appliquée, of which he was a founding member, the Bureau des Longitudes, and the Grand Ducal Institute.

In the summer of 1921, Lippmann and his wife (novelist Victor Cherbuliez’s daughter, whom he married in 1888) visited North America. Lippmann made the trip as a member of an official commission traveling to Canada to express France’s gratitude for aid during World War I. On the return trip to Europe aboard the steamer France, Lippmann died at sea. He was seventy-five.

Impact

Lippmann is most often remembered as the Nobel Prize winner who invented interference color photography. Yet his accomplishments extended far beyond a single discipline or intellectual pursuit. During his career of almost half a century, the physicist made significant contributions to nineteenth century studies of electricity, thermodynamics, optics, astronomy, seismology, photochemistry, and more—as a theoretician, an academician, and an inventor.

One of Lippmann’s earliest inventions played a vital part in the first recordings of the electrical activity of the heart. In 1876, French researcher E. J. Marey employed the Lippmann capillary electrometer in measuring electrical variations in the exposed muscles and heart of a frog. British physiologist Augustus Desiré Waller used the instrument in 1887 to record the first human electrocardiogram. An 1889 demonstration that Waller conducted influenced Dutch physiologist Willem Einthoven, who went on to conduct groundbreaking electrocardiogram research of his own. These early experiments, made possible by Lippmann’s invention, are the forerunners of modern electrocardiography.

Lippmann influenced the scientific world not only through his own work but also through that of the students whom he taught and mentored. Notable among these are Pierre Curie, whose doctoral thesis Lippmann approved, and Marie Sklodowska, who did her thesis work in Lippmann’s laboratory and reported to him as an advisee. In 1898, after she had become Marie Curie, her first paper before the Académie des Sciences was delivered on her behalf by Lippmann.

Bibliography

Bjelkhagen, Hans I. “Denisyuk Holography: From Lippmann Photography to Color Holography.” In The Art and Science of Holography: A Tribute to Emmett Leith and Yuri Denisyuk, edited by H. J. Caulfield. Bellingham, Wash.: SPIE Press, 2003. A technical but comprehensible discussion of the development of Lippmann’s color photography method, the principles of interferential photography, and its relationship to holography. Reproductions of Lippmann photographs, figures, references.

Coe, Brian. Colour Photography: The First Hundred Years, 1840-1940. London: Ash & Grant, 1978. The first chapter, “The Search for Colour,” describes the efforts of Lippmann and other early photographers to capture natural color. Includes figures detailing how Lippmann photographs were taken and viewed, along with a reproduction of a Lippmann image. Time line, glossary, index.

Ekspong, A. Gösta, ed. Nobel Lectures: Physics, 1901-1921. Singapore: World Scientific, 1998. Includes the presenter’s speech made when Lippmann was awarded the Nobel Prize, Lippmann’s own Nobel lecture explaining his color photography method, and a biography of the physicist. Index.

Hirsch, Robert. Exploring Colour Photography: A Complete Guide. London: Laurence King, 2005. Chapter 2, “A Concise History of Color Photography,” includes a clear and succinct description of the Lippmann photographic process, along with a discussion of the methods that preceded and followed it. References, photography time line, index.

Saxby, Graham. The Science of Imaging: An Introduction. Bristol, England: Institute of Physics, 2002. Chapter 6, “Images in Colour,” includes a straightforward explanation of Lippmann photography. The book sets his work in the context of other imaging methods. Figures, photographs, index.