A topic within Electromagnetism, itself one of 9 topics in that field and part of Physics.
2 works
Christiaan Huygens
Proposes light as a wave spreading through a medium, and derives reflection and refraction from wavefronts decades before interference confirmed it.
148 pages · about 2.5 hours to readlink checked 17 Sept 2026George Barbastathis and Colin Sheppard (MIT OpenCourseWare)
Develops optics from rays through waves to Fourier optics, arguing that an imaging system is best understood as a spatial-frequency filter rather than as a set of lenses.
link checked 17 Sept 2026