Gabriel Lippmann won the 1908 Nobel Prize in Physics for his method of reproducing colors photographically based on the phenomenon of interference.
Lippmann’s process, introduced in the 1890s, recorded standing light waves on a photographic plate. The resulting image could reproduce colors when viewed by reflected light, without using color dyes in the way later color photography systems did.
The method was scientifically elegant but difficult to use commercially because it required special plates, precise exposure conditions, and viewing geometry. It is sometimes confused with the Lumière brothers’ Autochrome process, which became a practical color-photography method and was introduced later.
Lippmann was born in Luxembourg and worked in France. His interference-based photography connected optics with image-making and demonstrated that physical wave behavior could be used to store color information.