The Invisible Man The Invisible Man The Invisible Man is a science fiction novel by H. G. Wells. Originally serialized in "Pearson's Weekly" in 1897, it was published as a novel the same year. The Invisible Man of the title is Griffin, a scientist who has devoted himself to research into optics and invents a way to change a body's refractive index to that of air so that it neither absorbs nor reflects light and thus becomes invisible. He successfully carries out this procedure on himself, but fails in his attempt to reverse it. An enthusiast of random and irresponsible violence, Griffin has
The Invisible Man so he extended it. Russian writer Yakov I. Perelman pointed out in "Physics Can Be Fun" (1913) that from a scientific point of view, a man made invisible by Griffin's method should have been blind, since a human eye works by "absorbing" incoming light, not letting it through completely. Wells seems to show some awareness of this problem in Chapter 20, where the eyes of an otherwise invisible cat retain visible retinas. Nonetheless, this would be insufficient, since the retina would be flooded with light (from all directions) that ordinarily is blocked by the opaque sclera of the eyeball. Also,