This article is only available in the PDF format. Download the PDF to view the article, as well as its associated figures and tables.
This little gem found its way through the stacks of books received by the journals of the American Medical Association to your book review editor. It tells, in a charming and highly readable way, the life of François De Aguilon (1567-1617), the Belgian Jesuit priest, philosopher, and mathematician, who published, in 1613, a major work on optics that contains the earliest description of stereographic principles. Aguilon's Opticorum introduced the terms stereographic and horopter to science and documented the discovery of the horopter and the invention of the photometer. In Opticorum, Aguilon presented an original theory of vision with two eyes and was one of the first individuals to propose the yellow-redblue color system that dominated color theory for ensuing centuries. In addition, the publication of Aguilon's Opticorum resulted from one of the great collaborations of science, printing, and art. The book
"Ophthalmologists and visual scientists should know who Aguilon was."