Erwin Schrödinger's Color Theory

1. Front Matter

   Pages i-x

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2. Schrödinger’s Color Theory and Its Background

   • Keith K. Niall

   Pages 1-10

3. Outlines of a Theory of Photopic Colorimetry (Part I): Basic Colorimetry, or Affine Color Properties (First Article)

   • Keith K. Niall

   Pages 11-34

4. Outlines of a Theory of Photopic Colorimetry (Part II) Basic Colorimetry or Affine Color Properties, Continued (First Article)

   • Keith K. Niall

   Pages 35-59

5. Outlines of a Theory of Photopic Colorimetry (Part III): Advanced Colorimetry, or Full-Blooded Colorimetry (Second Article)

   • Keith K. Niall

   Pages 61-97

6. A Metric of Color

   • Keith K. Niall

   Pages 99-114

7. A Theory of Pigments of Maximum Luminous Efficiency

   • Keith K. Niall

   Pages 115-131

8. On the Origin of the Eye’s Sensitivity Curves

   • Keith K. Niall

   Pages 133-150

9. On the Subjective Color of Starlight and the Quality of Twilight Sensation

   • Keith K. Niall

   Pages 151-165

10. On the Relation of the Tetrachromatic Theory to the Trichromatic Theory

    • Keith K. Niall

    Pages 167-185

11. Back Matter

    Pages 187-193

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This book presents the most complete translation to date of Erwin Schrödinger’s work on colorimetry. In his work Schrödinger proposed a projective geometry of color space, rather than a Euclidean line-element. He also proposed new (at the time) colorimetric methods – in detail and at length - which represented a dramatic conceptual shift in colorimetry. Schrödinger shows how the trichromatic (or Young-Helmholtz) theory of color and the opponent-process (or Hering) theory of color are formally the same theory, or at least only trivially different. These translations of Schrödinger’s bold concepts for color space have a fresh resonance and importance for contemporary color theory.

• Color Appearance Models
• Color Measurement
• Color Space
• Color Theory
• Colorimetry History
• Colorimetry Theory
• Hering Color Theory
• Opponent-process Color Theory
• Psychophysics
• Schrödinger Papers
• Trichromatic Color Theory
• Vision Science
• Young-Helmholtz Color Theory
• projective Geometry Applications

“Particularly impressive in all of Schrödinger’s writings presented here is the frank tentative and open approach that he takes. … The work is interesting and valuable to non-experts, such as some artists, who might find the mathematics hard going.” (Ernest Edmonds and Mike Leggett, Leonardo, .leonardo.info, May, 2019)

“I find Niall’s translation to be a faithful representation of what I view as Schrödinger’s contributions to colorimetry (both fundamental and advanced). … I stand in awe of Niall’s compendium of translations, each done independently of the earlier ones. The arguments one can have about which translation is more ‘correct’ will be around for a long time and cannot be escaped. For the academician/color-theorist, this book is a must-read.” (Michael H. Brill, Color Research and Application, Vol. 43 (04), August, 2018)​

• Toronto, Canada

  Keith K. Niall

Dr. Keith Niall is First Secretary for The Technical Cooperation Program at the Embassy of Canada in Washington, DC. He graduated from McGill University (Montreal, Canada) with a doctorate in psychology. He pursued postdoctoral studies in the experimental psychology of vision at Queen's University (Kingston, Ontario, Canada) and the Defence and Civil Institute of Environmental Medicine (Toronto, Ontario). He has been a scientist with Defence Research and Development Canada in Toronto since 1988. He was an exchange scientist to the US Air Force Research Laboratory's flight simulation facility in Mesa, Arizona. He has published widely in the study of human vision and visual displays.

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