Arthur König

Arthur Peter König (1856 to 1901) was a German physicist who specialised in optics and devoted his short life to physiological optics. Born with congenital kyphosis, he studied in Bonn and Heidelberg, moved to Berlin in the fall of 1879 to study under Hermann von Helmholtz, and became Helmholtz's assistant in 1882. After obtaining his doctoral degree in 1882 he qualified for a professorial position in 1884, and in 1890 he became director of the physical department of the Physiological Institute of the University of Berlin. In 1886, with Conrad Dietrici, he published an empirical determination of the spectral sensitivity of the human rod and cone sensors, and a more detailed paper in 1892 covered dichromats and monochromats, providing evidence that the most common form of color blindness is due to the absence of one cone type in the eye. He was also an active editor, and after Helmholtz died in 1894 he took on the task of completing the second edition of Helmholtz's Treatise on Physiological Optics. Circulatory problems caused by his kyphosis resulted in his premature death in 1901.