How a medieval Oxford friar used light and colour to find out what stars and planets are made of

By William Crozier, Duns Scotus Assistant Professor of Franciscan Studies, Durham University

During the 1240s, Richard Fishacre, a Dominican friar at Oxford University, used his knowledge of light and colour to show that the stars and planets are made of the same elements found here on Earth. In so doing he challenged the scientific orthodoxy of his day and pre-empted the methods and discoveries of the 21st-century James Webb space telescope.

Following the Ancient Greek philosopher Aristotle, medieval physics affirmed that the stars and planets were made from a special celestial…

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