User:Gavin R Putland

Gavin R Putland PhD This user has a Doctor of Philosophy degree in Electrical Engineering. 1st This user has a First-Class Honours degree. This user has published peer-reviewed articles in academic journals. A, B, and C This user prefers the serial comma. 4 August 2025 This user supports International Date Format (day month year) "…"! US vs. UK This user uses "logical quotation marks". Forcing internal punctuation leads to factual errors. It's not a nationalistic style issue! This user is an Australian. G'day, mate! This user is a member of the Orthodox Church.

Casual sessional (mathematical sciences), Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology. Sometime engineer, tutor, associate lecturer, postdoctoral research assistant, and research officer for economic NGO.

WikiJournal preprints:

• "Coordinates Last: Vector Analysis Done Fast";
• "The unreasonable effectiveness of the cathetus rule in ancient and modern optics", 6 May 2023 —
• "Flawed proofs of the unambiguity of the determinant as defined by cofactor expansions", 27 January 2024 — .

Other preprints:

• "Quick proofs of properties of the cycloid", Zenodo: 15601996, 2025;
• "Consistent derivation of Kirchhoff's integral theorem and diffraction formula and the Maggi-Rubinowicz transformation using high-school math", Zenodo: 7205781, 19 December 2022;
• "A tautological theory of diffraction", Zenodo: 3563468, 5 December 2019;
• "Full conjugations of nearly all French verbs in one page", Zenodo: 4662833, 5 April 2021 —
• G. R. Putland (ed.), "H. A. Lorentz on the equivalence of Huygens' construction and Fermat's principle", Zenodo: 3835134, 20 May 2020;
• H. A. Lorentz (tr. G. R. Putland), "Centenary of Augustin Fresnel" (1927), Zenodo: 3935795, 8 July 2020 —
• List of English translations of works by Augustin Fresnel  (so far I am responsible for eight of them; with links), Zenodo: 4766520.

Wikipedia articles of which I am the main author (but usually not the latest editor):

• Augustin-Jean Fresnel
• Fermat's principle
• Fresnel rhomb
• Index ellipsoid
• Plane of polarization
• Total internal reflection.

Other Wikipedia articles to which I have contributed:

• Fresnel equations
• A Dynamical Theory of the Electromagnetic Field
• Fresnel lens.

My debut on Wikisource :

• A. Fresnel (tr./ed. G. R. Putland), Letter to Arago on biaxial birefringence (21 September 1821), Wikisource, April 2021.

My contributions to Wikimedia Commons :

Expandable
File:Fermat-Huygens principle.svg; File:Field-vectors-and-propagation-directions.svg; File:Huygens-construction-two-iterations.svg; File:Phase advance at internal reflection.svg; File:Refraction-at-spherical-surface.svg; File:Wave vectors dense to rare.svg; File:Wave vectors dense to rare n1 to n2.svg; File:Wave vectors n1 to n2.svg; File:Wavefront refraction slow to fast.svg.

My derivatives/modifications of Wikimedia Commons files:

Expandable
File:Aquarium total internal reflection.jpg; File:Evanescent wave cropped.jpg; File:Fresnel rhomb linear to elliptical.svg; File:ReflexionTotal en.svg; File:Total internal reflection by fluorescence.jpg.

Works in progress:

• Book:‍ Wave Foundations of Ray Optics ;
• Book:‍ Fresnel, On Light, bicentenary English edition .

Other external links:

• G. R. Putland, "No integration-by-parts, no l'Hôpital, some telescoping", in "Simplest proof of Taylor's theorem", Math Stack Exchange, February 2024;
• G. R. Putland, "Trigonometric proof of vector triple product expansion", Math Stack Exchange, January 2024;
• G. R. Putland, "Stirling's approximation: Can we make it obvious?", Math Stack Exchange, ed. October 2023;
• G. R. Putland, "The observation by Huygens that should have discredited Newton's 'rule' for the extraordinary refraction of calcite", 8 October 2016 – 24 May 2018  (Archived 26 June 2017 at the Wayback Machine);
• G. R. Putland, "Errata in various editions of Huygens' Treatise on Light", 7 June 2016 — .

Find me on LinkedIn.