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biography
| sex:
| male
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| lived:
| (1768–1851)
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| biography:
| Geologist and physicist, born in Edinburgh, EC Scotland, UK. He lectured in natural philosophy at Edinburgh, and in 1828 invented the Nicol prism, which utilizes the doubly refracting property of Iceland spar, and which proved invaluable in the investigation of polarized light. He also devised a new method of preparing thin sections of rocks for the microscope, but his reluctance to publish delayed their use for some 40 years, until Sorby and others introduced them into petrology. |
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