The special relationship between France and the polarization of light from the beginning of the 19th century until the present day is reviewed in the lives and works of Étienne Louis Malus, François Arago, Jean-Baptiste Biot, Augustin Fresnel, Louis Pasteur, Frédéric Wallerant, Aimé Cotton, Francis Perrin, and Alain Aspect. To avoid a redundant presentation of information that can be found with an Internet search engine, the author emphasizes how the aforementioned individuals have influenced the studies of stereochemistry, molecular chirality, and the polarization of light in his research group.
Keywords: circular dichroism; entanglement; fluorescence; history of science; optical activity; polarized light.
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