Photopsin absorb light at different wavelengths as retinal-bound pigments. Humans have three different photoreceptor proteins ("photopsin" or "cone opsins") which are found in cone cells and which are responsible for colour vision: George Wald received the 1967 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for his experiments in the 1950s that showed the difference in absorbance by these photopsins (see image). Photopsin Photopsins (also known as Cone opsins) are the photoreceptor proteins found in the cone cells of the retina that are the basis of color vision. Iodopsin, the cone pigment system in chicken retina, is a close analog of the "visual
Trichromacy Young proposed that color vision was a result of three different photoreceptor cells. Hermann von Helmholtz later expanded on Young's ideas using color-matching experiments which showed that people with normal vision needed three wavelengths to create the normal range of colors. Physiological evidence for trichromatic theory was later given by Gunnar Svaetichin (1956). Each of the three types of cones in the retina of the eye contains a different type of photosensitive pigment, which is composed of a transmembrane protein called opsin and a light-sensitive molecule called 11-cis retinal. Each different pigment is especially sensitive to a certain wavelength of