About this author

Michel Eugène Chevreul (17861889) was a French chemist whose foray into colour theory left a lasting mark on art, design, and visual science. While originally a chemist by training, it was his appointment in 1824 as director of dyeing at the Gobelins Manufactory in Paris that pivoted his career toward colour.

His investigations led to the formulation of the law of simultaneous contrast: the idea that the perception of one colour is influenced by adjacent colours. Published in his landmark 1839 treatise De la loi du contraste simultané des couleurs, this theory revolutionised how colour was understood and applied.