The Command of Light

Book excerpt: Henry Rowland (1848-1901) was one of the most important figures in the founding of modern physics in the U.S. A principal founder and first pres. of the Amer. Physical Soc., he is best known for his invention of the concave spectral grating for which he won a gold medal and grand prize at the 1890 Paris Exposition. A grad. of Rensselaer Polytechnic Inst. in civil engineering, Rowland was prof. of physics at Johns Hopkins Univ., where he had the principal part in forming the first school of Amer. physicists to be professionally trained in the U.S. In this vol., Sweetnam, using Rowland's papers and those of his colleagues and students, has written the first scholarly exposition of Rowland's work.