Victor Schumann
Victor Schumann (1841–1913) was a German physicist and spectroscopist. Born December 21, 1841 in Markranstädt, he died September 1, 1913 in Leipzig. In 1893 he discovered the vacuum ultraviolet, studying light with wavelengths under about 200 nanometers. He used fluorite lenses and prisms and kept the equipment in a vacuum because air absorbs this light. He even made his own photographic plates with thin gelatin layers. He reported hydrogen lines in the spectrum of Nova Aurigae and in vacuum-tube spectra. His work opened the way to atomic emission spectroscopy and later the discovery of the hydrogen Lyman series by Theodore Lyman in 1914.
This page was last edited on 2 February 2026, at 17:01 (CET).