History
William Nicol, whose name is associated with the creation of the Nicol prism, seems to have been the first to prepare thin slices of mineral substances, and his methods were applied by Henry Thronton Maire Witham (1831) to the study of plant petrifactions. This method, of such far-reaching importance in petrology, was not at once made use of for the systematic investigation of rocks, and it was not until 1858 that Henry Clifton Sorby pointed out its value. Meanwhile the optical study of sections of crystals had been advanced by Sir David Brewster and other physicists and mineralogists and it only remained to apply their methods to the minerals visible in rock sections.
Read more about this topic: Optical Mineralogy
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