Of Rainbows

Perspectives from The Artist's Road

Murnau with Rainbow 1909 Wassily Kandinsky

How lucky we are to have friends who send us books that they know we will find interesting. This is how Adam Rogers’s new book, Full Spectrum - How the Science of Color Made Us Modern came to us. It is filled with interesting information about the history of understanding light and color and our ongoing quest to create more and more brilliant and vivid colors.

Rogers addresses the commitment of scholars from ancient Greece, the Arab world and Europe, all working to understand the nature of light. One of the phenomena providing clues was the rainbow. Besides being a source of delight and what once was thought to be magic, rainbows helped scientists to understand the light refractions and reflections that produce the colors we see.

Refraction is caused by sunlight changing direction as it travels through a denser medium than dry air—for example, a raindrop. It is then reflected off of the backside of the raindrop, the…