Hermann Wilhelm Vogel

Hermann Wilhelm Vogel
Hermann Wilhelm Vogel, with signature in partial Kurrent handwriting script
Born	26 March 1834 Dobrilugk, Kingdom of Prussia
Died	17 December 1898(1898-12-17) (aged 64) Berlin, German Empire
Residence	Germany
Nationality	German
Fields	, photography
Institutions	Technical University of Berlin
Alma mater	University of Berlin
Doctoral advisor	Karl Friedrich August Rammelsberg
Doctoral students	Alfred Stieglitz

Hermann Wilhelm Vogel (26 March 1834 – 17 December 1898) was a German and photographer who discovered dye sensitization, which is of great importance to photography.

After finishing school in Frankfurt (Oder), he studied at the Royal Industrial Institute of Berlin, earning his Ph.D. with Karl Friedrich August Rammelsberg in 1863. Vogel's thesis, which was published in Poggendorffs Annalen (119, pp. 497), had the title: Über das Verhalten des Chlorsilbers, Bromsilbers und Iodsilbers im Licht und die Theorie der Photographie (Reactions of Silver Chloride, Silver Bromide and Silver Iodide with Light and the Theory of Photography). This marked the beginning of his research into the photographic process.

From 1860 until 1865, he was an assistant in the mineralogical museum of the University of Berlin, and from 1884 was director of the photo-technical laboratory of the Technical Institute there. From 1864 he was a professor at Berlin's Technische Hochschule (from 1879, the Technical University of Berlin), where he introduced photography as a field of study.

In 1873 Vogel discovered dye sensitization, a pivotal contribution to the progress of photography. The photographic emulsions in use at that time were sensitive to blue, violet and ultraviolet light, but only slightly sensitive to green and practically insensitive to the rest of the spectrum. While trying out some factory-made collodion bromide dry plates from England, Vogel was amazed to find that they were more sensitive to green than to blue. He sought the cause and his experiments indicated that this sensitivity was due to a yellow substance in the emulsion, apparently included as an anti-halation agent. Rinsing it out with alcohol removed the unusual sensitivity to green. He then tried adding small amounts of various aniline dyes to freshly prepared emulsions and found several dyes which added sensitivity to various parts of the spectrum, closely corresponding to wavelengths of light the dyes absorbed. Vogel was able to add sensitivity to green, yellow, orange and even red.