The Fundamental Colour Sensations in Man's Colour Sense.

Abstract

This monograph, which is the authorized English translation of the original treatise in Swedish, will appeal to the student of color vision and color vision theory more than to the ophthalmologist. It includes a report on experimental work previously published by the author which deals with color responses particularly in the yellow and indigo regions of the spectrum. These data, together with historical and critical observations, form the framework of Gothlin's thesis that the fundamental color sensations in man's color sense are red, green and blue ; that yellow and violet are not fundamental colors—points of controversy since before the days of Thomas Young. A fundamental color sensation is defined by Gothlin as the sensation that would be produced by any one of the retinal processes alone, assuming it could occur alone. Yellow, he contends, is a sensation arising from the simultaneous effect of impulses from the receptors for red