Victor Schumann was a physicist

Physics

Physics is a natural science that involves the study of matter and its motion through spacetime, along with related concepts such as energy and force. More broadly, it is the general analysis of nature, conducted in order to understand how the universe behaves.Physics is one of the oldest academic...

 and spectroscopist who in 1893 discovered the vacuum ultraviolet

Ultraviolet

Ultraviolet light is electromagnetic radiation with a wavelength shorter than that of visible light, but longer than X-rays, in the range 10 nm to 400 nm, and energies from 3 eV to 124 eV...

.

He was the first to measure spectra below 200 nm. For this, he used a prism and lenses in fluorin instead of quartz, he prepared himself photographic plates with a reduced layer of gelatin, and he placed the entire apparatus under vacuum. Indeed, oxygen gas absorbs the radiation with a wavelength below 195 nm.

His work opened the way to atomic emission spectroscopy, leading eventually to the discovery of the hydrogen spectral lines series (Lyman series

Lyman series

In physics and chemistry, the Lyman series is the series of transitions and resulting ultraviolet emission lines of the hydrogen atom as an electron goes from n ≥ 2 to n = 1...

) by Theodore Lyman

Theodore Lyman

Theodore Lyman was a U.S. physicist and spectroscopist, born in Boston. He graduated from Harvard in 1897, from which he also received his Ph.D. in 1900. He became an assistant professor in physics at Harvard, where he remained, becoming full professor in 1917, and where he was also director of...

in 1914.