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
The Rainbow Lawrence's novels is that "In desiring to unite with [the other sex], we are desiring to mingle with something that is deeply - perhaps essentially - not ourselves, and which brings us to experience a character and inwardness that challenge us with their strangeness." Scruton believes that "The Rainbow" vindicates Lawrence's vision. The critic Harold Bloom listed "The Rainbow" in his "The Western Canon" (1994) as one of the books that have been important and influential in Western culture. In 1999, the Modern Library ranked "The Rainbow" forty-eighth on a list of the 100 best novels in English of the