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
Unweaving the Rainbow Unweaving the Rainbow Unweaving the Rainbow: Science, Delusion and the Appetite for Wonder is a 1998 book by Richard Dawkins, in which the author discusses the relationship between science and the arts from the perspective of a scientist. Dawkins addresses the misperception that science and art are at odds. Driven by the responses to his books "The Selfish Gene" and "The Blind Watchmaker" wherein readers resented his naturalistic world view, seeing it as depriving life of meaning, Dawkins felt the need to explain that, as a scientist, he saw the world as full of wonders and a source of pleasure.