Without the invention of anti-reflection lens coatings, modern lenses couldn’t exist. With nothing added to the surface of a glass lens, about 4% of the light hitting it gets reflected back and is lost. A camera lens with only a single element has two air-glass surfaces, so the reflection losses double. Modern lenses often have upwards of 20 elements in them, so uncoated surfaces would result in huge light losses. Much of the light that gets reflected off of lens surfaces will bounce around inside the lens and end up fogging your image with horrible flare. In 1935, the Ukrainian physicist Alexander Smakula of the Zeiss company invented the world’s first anti-reflection coating. This invention was so important that it became a German military secret. The Allies only discovered this secret in early World War II, and so lens anti-reflection coating knowledge quickly spread worldwide.
Alexander Smakula (1900-1983) was born to a peasant family in Dobrovody village, Austria-Hungary (today Ternopil Oblast, Ukraine). After finishing his studies at the Ternopil gymnasium he applied to the University of Göttingen from which he graduated in 1927. He taught at Göttingen University and then headed the optical laboratory at the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute in Heidelberg, and the research laboratory at the Carl Zeiss Optical Co in Jena, Germany.
In the United States, he taught at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where he organized and headed the Laboratory of Crystal Physics. He belonged to the Ukrainian Engineers’ Society of America, the Shevchenko Scientific Society, and the Ukrainian American Association of University Professors.
