Robert Williams Wood

Robert Williams Wood (May 2, 1868 – August 11, 1955) was an American physicist and inventor who made pivotal contributions to the field of optics. He pioneered infrared and ultraviolet photography. Wood's patents and theoretical work inform modern understanding of the physics of ultraviolet light, and made possible myriad uses of UV fluorescence, which became popular after World War I. He published many articles on spectroscopy, phosphorescence, diffraction, and ultraviolet light.

Early life and education

Robert W. Wood was born in Concord, Massachusetts to Robert Williams Wood, Senior. His father had been born in Massachusetts in 1803 and worked as a physician in Maine until 1838, then as a physician and pioneer in the sugar industry on the Hawaiian Islands until 1866. He was also active in the American Statistical Association.

Wood junior attended The Roxbury Latin School, initially intending to become a priest. However, he decided to study optics instead when he witnessed a rare glowing aurora one night and believed the effect to be caused by "invisible rays". In his pursuit to find these "invisible rays", Wood studied and earned several degrees in physics from Harvard University and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

As a student at Harvard he swallowed marijuana as part of a self-experiment, recorded the hallucinations he experienced in a report for a course of psychology. A New York newspaper published the report. After he had received a bachelor's degree in chemistry there, he continued at Johns Hopkins University and in 1892 he changed to the University of Chicago. In 1894 he went to the Berlin University to continue chemistry, and under Heinrich Rubens's influence changed permanently to a career in physics. In 1896, he returned to the US, first the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and