Joseph Plateau
The Belgian physicist behind an early moving-picture toy, who found the rules soap films obey after going blind.
Books
Statique expérimentale et théorique des liquides soumis aux seules forces moléculaires1873His two-volume study of liquids shaped only by their own molecular forces, where his soap-film rules first appeared.
Mentioned in
How a bubble holds its shape
A soap bubble’s wall is a hundred times thinner than a hair. How does something like that hold its shape? The story starts with an 18th-century painting and ends with a blind physicist who worked out the bubble’s rules from what other people told him.