For information on the Italian

Italy

Italy , officially the Italian Republic languages]] under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages. In each of these, Italy's official name is as follows:;;;;;;;;), is a unitary parliamentary republic in South-Central Europe. To the north it borders France, Switzerland, Austria and...

 luge

Luge

A Luge is a small one- or two-person sled on which one sleds supine and feet-first. Steering is done by flexing the sled's runners with the calf of each leg or exerting opposite shoulder pressure to the seat. Racing sleds weigh 21-25 kilograms for singles and 25-30 kilograms for doubles. Luge...

r, please see Arthur Konig (luge)

Arthur König (luge)

Arthur König is an Italian luger who competed in the 1990s. A natural track luger, he won the bronze medal in the men's doubles event at the 1996 FIL World Luge Natural Track Championships in Oberperfuss, Austria....

.

Arthur Peter König (September 13, 1856, Krefeld – October 26,1901, Berlin) devoted his short life to physiological optics. Born with congenital kyphosis

Kyphosis

Kyphosis , also called roundback or Kelso's hunchback, is a condition of over-curvature of the thoracic vertebrae...

 he studied in Bonn and Heidelberg, moving to Berlin in the fall of 1879 where he studied under Hermann von Helmholtz, whose assistant he became in 1882. After obtaining a doctoral degree in 1882 he qualified for a professorial position in 1884. In 1890 he became director of the physical department of the Physiological Institute of the University of Berlin. In the same year he married Laura Köttgen with whom he had a son, Arthur, who became an astronomer. Circulatory problems caused by his kyphosis resulted in his premature death in 1901.[1]
Originally working in physics, he began in 1883 to concentrate on physiological optics where he published over thirty papers, some of seminal importance. Among these are the 1886 paper (together with C. Dietrici) ‘Fundamental sensations and their sensitivity in the spectrum’, an empirical determination of what in fact is the spectral sensitivity of the human rod

Rod cell

Rod cells, or rods, are photoreceptor cells in the retina of the eye that can function in less intense light than can the other type of visual photoreceptor, cone cells. Named for their cylindrical shape, rods are concentrated at the outer edges of the retina and are used in peripheral vision. On...

 and cone

Cone cell

Cone cells, or cones, are photoreceptor cells in the retina of the eye that are responsible for color vision; they function best in relatively bright light, as opposed to rod cells that work better in dim light. If the retina is exposed to an intense visual stimulus, a negative afterimage will be...

 sensors of vision.[2] Earlier attempts at such measurements, but based on much simpler technology, had been made in 1860 by the English physicist James Clerk Maxwell

James Clerk Maxwell

James Clerk Maxwell of Glenlair was a Scottish physicist and mathematician. His most prominent achievement was formulating classical electromagnetic theory. This united all previously unrelated observations, experiments and equations of electricity, magnetism and optics into a consistent theory...

 (1831–1879). Using newly development spectrophotometric equipment and modifications of the experimental procedure König and Dieterici published a more detailed paper in 1892, determining the “fundamental sensations” not only of subjects with normal color vision (trichromats) but also of dichromats and monochromats (Fig. 2).[3] With these measurements König provided evidence for the conjecture that the most common form of color blindness

Color blindness

Color blindness or color vision deficiency is the inability or decreased ability to see color, or perceive color differences, under lighting conditions when color vision is not normally impaired...

, dichromacy, is due to the absence of one cone type in the eye. Averaged König functions were widely used in psychophysical color stimulus calculations until new data based on a slightly different method and involving many more observers were determined by J. Guild and W. D. Wright in the later 1920s, resulting in the recommendations of standard observer data by the Commission Internationale de l’Eclairage (CIE, International Commission on Illumination) in 1931.

Other important investigations involve the sensitivity of the normal eye for differences in wavelength of light,[4] dependence of the Newton/Grassmann laws of color mixture on light intensity,[5] validity of Fechner

Fechner

Fechner is a surname of:* Christian Fechner , a French film producer and screenwriter* Gustav Fechner , a German experimental psychologist* Harry Fechner , a German football defender...

’s law at different light intensities,[6] brightness of spectral hues at different light intensities,[7] and the similarity between the perceptual sensitivity of the rod cells and the absorption spectrum of the rod photopigment, rhodopsin

Rhodopsin

Rhodopsin, also known as visual purple, is a biological pigment of the retina that is responsible for both the formation of the photoreceptor cells and the first events in the perception of light. Rhodopsins belong to the G-protein coupled receptor family and are extremely sensitive to light,...

[8]
König was very active as an editor. In 1889 he became the sole editor of Verhandlungen der Deutschen Physikalischen Gesellschaft. From 1891 on, together with the psychologist H. Ebbinghaus

Ebbinghaus

Ebbinghaus is a German surname. It may refer to:*Steven Ebbinghaus , a German roof tiler*Volker Ebbinghaus , a German building inspector*Bernhard Ebbinghaus , a German sociologist*Lutz Ebbinghaus , a German pensioner...

, he edited the journal Zeitschrift für Psychologie und Physiologie der Sinnesorgane. After Helmholtz’s death in 1894 König took on the task of completing preparations for the second edition of the former’s Handbuch der physiologischen Optik (1896, Treatise on physiological optics)[9] to which he added a bibliography of vision consisting of nearly 8,000 titles.
König’s 32 papers on physiological optics were published posthumously in book form in 1903.[10]