William Hyde Wollaston

William Hyde Wollaston (1766-1828), British chemist and physicist, noted for his inventions in optics. Wollaston was born in East Dereham. After practicing as a physician, he confined himself to research work when he became partially blind in 1800. His main fields of research were electrochemistry and optics, and he is credited with the discovery of the elements palladium and rhodium, with a method of making platinum metal malleable, and with being the first to report the dark lines in the spectrum of the sun. Wollaston also made many valuable observations on the refraction of light and invented an apparatus for measuring the refractive power of solids. His most valuable inventions were the camera lucida, a double-image prism that has since proved indispensable in microscopic work, and the reflecting goniometer, an apparatus used for determining the geometrical form of crystals.