History
Isaac Newton studied refraction in prisms. He failed, however, to recognize the material dependence of the dispersion relation. Had he done so, he would almost certainly have invented the achromatic lens.
Dispersion of waves on water was studied by Pierre-Simon Laplace in 1776.
The universality of the Kramers-Kronig relations (1926/27) became apparent with subsequent papers on the dispersion relation's connection to causality in the scattering theory of all types of waves and particles.
Read more about this topic: Dispersion Relation
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