Victor Schumann (21 December 1841 – 1 September 1913) was a physicist and spectroscopist who in 1893 discovered the vacuum ultraviolet. Schumann wished to study the "Extreme Ultraviolet" region. For this, he used a prism and lenses in fluorite instead of quartz allowing himself to be the first to measure spectra below 200 nm. Oxygen gas would absorb the radiation with a wavelength below 195 nm but Schumann placed the entire apparatus under vacuum. He prepared his own photographic plates with a reduced layer of gelatin.