Beer-Lambert law

noun

Beer-Lam·​bert law ˈber-ˈläm-ˌbert- 

variants or less commonly Beer-Lambert's law

physics

: beer's law

Absorption spectrophotometry is concerned with the absorption of incident radiation, as a function of wavelength, upon passage through a given medium. Its use in quantitative analysis is founded upon the Beer-Lambert Law which relates the amount of radiation absorbed at a given wave length to the concentration and length of the absorbing path.

—Tom D. Schlabach, Encyclopedia Of Chemistry, 1966

Word History

Etymology

after Johann Heinrich Lambert †1777 Swiss-Alsatian mathematician and physicist, whose formulation of light absorption in a dense material is complementary to Beer's law

First Known Use

1908, in the meaning defined above

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