Rainbow which a glass prism could separate into the full spectrum of colours, rejecting the theory that the colours were produced by a modification of white light. He also showed that red light is refracted less than blue light, which led to the first scientific explanation of the major features of the rainbow. Newton's corpuscular theory of light was unable to explain supernumerary rainbows, and a satisfactory explanation was not found until Thomas Young realised that light behaves as a wave under certain conditions, and can interfere with itself. Young's work was refined in the 1820s by George Biddell Airy, who
Rainbows in culture avoid disease appears to pre-date the Incan empire. In New Age and Hindu philosophy, the seven colours of the rainbow represent the seven chakras, from the first chakra (red) to the seventh chakra (violet). Rainbows are generally described as very colourful and peaceful. The rainbow occurs often in paintings. Frequently these have a symbolic or programmatic significance (for example, Albrecht Dürer's Melancholia I). In particular, the rainbow appears regularly in religious art (for example, Joseph Anton Koch's "Noah's Thank Offering"). Romantic landscape painters such as Turner and Constable were more concerned with recording fleeting effects of light (for example, Constable's