Thomas Young

Thomas Young (1773–1829) was a British physician and polymath who proposed that color vision depends on three kinds of receptors in the retina.

Hermann von Helmholtz: A German physicist and physician who developed a physiological account of color vision. Helmholtz later expanded Young’s three-receptor proposal into the Young–Helmholtz theory.
Trichromatic theory: The theory that color vision arises from the combined responses of three classes of retinal cone cells. This is the modern form of Young’s proposal for three kinds of color receptor.
Young's double-slit experiment: An experiment demonstrating interference when light passes through two narrow slits. It exemplifies Young’s experimental approach to light, although it concerns wave behavior rather than color receptors.
Young–Helmholtz theory: A theory that color vision results from three receptor classes with different spectral sensitivities. Helmholtz developed Young’s suggestion into a detailed physiological theory.
George Palmer: An English physician who proposed a three-color theory of vision in the eighteenth century. Palmer’s earlier proposal anticipated the three-component account Young later advanced.
Cone cell: A light-sensitive retinal cell specialized for color vision and vision in bright conditions. Cone cells are the retinal receptors that correspond most closely to Young’s proposed elements.
Wave theory of light: The account of light as a wave phenomenon, supported by interference and diffraction. Young’s color proposal arose within a broader career that helped establish light’s wave nature.
Color blindness: A group of conditions in which one or more aspects of color discrimination are reduced or absent. Selective color deficits became understandable as altered or missing receptor signals.
Isaac Newton: An English physicist who established that white light can be separated into a spectrum of colors. Newton’s optics supplied the color framework that Young sought to explain physiologically.
Color matching experiment: An experiment in which observers combine lights to match the appearance of a target color. Color matching later provided a quantitative test of three-component color vision.

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