A Brill Calendar: August 16

Few winners of Nobel-Prizes have become celebrities on par with Albert Einstein or Henri Dunant.

Massing names together since 1901 results in an ice-burg of floating fame: the greater mass of it is not directly visible, with the majority of laureates not among the living anymore. During the 20th century the history of research and progress is largely a history of the accomplishments of winners of Nobel-Prizes; while their separate lives, illustrate individually the growth of civilization and culture.

It is seldom, however, that such a shift is as encompassing and clearly discernible as in the work of Gabriel Lippmann (Hollerich, Luxembourg, August 16 1845 – July 13 1921, at sea). He is born during the infancy of photography; while five years after Lippmann’s death John Baird demonstrates the first television. Professor Lippmann received the Physics Prize of 1908 for his method to reproduce colours photographically, while he had his sensational work - ‘Colour Photography’ - communicated to the Parisian Academy of Sciences in 1891; four years before Röntgen published his seminal images and the Lumière Brothers organized their ‘Prémière’ at 14, Boulevard des Capucines, Paris.

In his presentation speech Professor Hasselberg, President of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences, said: ‘through his complete grasp of all the resources physics can offer, Professor Lippmann has created this elegant method of obtaining images which combine stability with colorific splendour’; and the Laureate said himself, on December 14, in the last paragraph of his acceptance speech: ‘The length of exposure (one minute in sun-light) is still too long for the portrait. It was fifteen minutes when I first began my work. Progress may continue. Life is short and progress is slow.’