← all shorts

Person

Ernst Abbe

A black-and-white portrait of Ernst Abbe, a German physicist, wearing glasses and a formal suit, with a thoughtful expression.

German physicist, 1840–1905, born in Eisenach to a working-class family and educated at Jena and Göttingen. From 1866 he worked with Carl Zeiss on the theoretical foundations of microscope design and in 1873 published the diffraction-limit and sine-condition results that turned lens design into a mathematical discipline. After Zeiss's death he restructured the firm as a worker-owned foundation.

Mentioned in 1 article