The Helmholtz legacy in color metrics: Schrödinger's color theory (Q6050210)

This study is a continuation of the authors' work [ibid. 77, No. 2, 201--220 (2023; Zbl 1521.01011)], where they described Helmholtz's way from experimental findings to his mathematical derivation of the line element, directing the geometry of color space, and showed that for Riemann this idea was of greatest importance because the color space became a candidate for an experimental test of non-Euclidean geometry. The rediscovery of Helmholtz's work forgotten for almost three decades was due to Erwin Schrödinger. ``This paper represents an overall picture of Schrödinger's works on color'', with a special focus to Helmholtz's hypothesis of a Riemannian line element for color space. It discusses also Schrödinger's Viennese background and analyses the influence of both Helmholtz's and Schrödinger's works on the subsequent developments of color metrics.