The Harvest of Optics: Descartes, Mydorge, and their paths to a theory of refraction (Q6557149)

René Descartes' (1596--1650) collaboration with Claude Mydorge (1585--1647) on optics which began in 1626 and lasted about a year, resulted in the discovery of the sine law of refraction. They worked together on the anaclastic problem, but couldn't show that the ellipse and the hyperbola are curves having the anaclastic property. Descartes needed the help from Isaac Beeckman (1588--1637) to give the argument for this property in his celebrated \textit{Dioptrique} from 1637. Mydorge had his own manuscript written in the winter of 1630--31, with different demonstrations.\N\NThe author of this interesting paper challenges Descartes' priority of the results published in his \textit{Dioptrique} in 1637 and convincingly argues that Mydorge and Beeckman should also be credited as discoverers of the law of refraction and contributors to the solution of the anaclastic problem.