Henry Augustus Rowland

Henry Augustus Rowland (born Nov. 27, 1848, Honesdale, Pa., U.S.—died April 16, 1901, Baltimore, Md.) was an American physicist who invented the concave diffraction grating, which replaced prisms and plane gratings in many applications, and revolutionized spectrum analysis—the resolution of a beam of light into components that differ in wavelength. In 1872 Rowland became an instructor of physics at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, Troy, N.Y., and four years later he was elected to the chair of...