Joseph Petzval

Joseph Petzval (1807 to 1891) was a mathematician, inventor and physicist best known for his work in optics, born at Szepesbéla in the Kingdom of Hungary, now Spišská Belá in Slovakia. He studied at the Institutum Geometricum in Pest, lectured there, and headed its Institute of Practical Geometry and Hydrology and Architecture between 1841 and 1848, before accepting a chair of mathematics at the University of Vienna. He is considered one of the main founders of geometrical optics, modern photography and cinematography; his inventions include the Petzval portrait lens and opera glasses, both still in common use, and he did extensive work on aberration in optical systems. He is also credited with the discovery of the Laplace transform, and he became a member of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences in 1873.