Victor Schumann (21 December 1841 – 1 September 1913) was a physicist and spectroscopist who in 1893 discovered the vacuum ultraviolet.

Victor Schumann
Born	21 December 1841 (1841-12-21) Markranstädt
Died	1 September 1913 (1913-10) (aged 71) Leipzig
Known for	Discovered the vacuum ultraviolet Schumann–Runge bands
Scientific career
Fields	Physics

Schumann wished to study the "Extreme Ultraviolet" region. For this, he used a prism and lenses in fluorite instead of quartz^[1] 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.

He published on the Hydrogen line in the spectrum of Nova Aurigae and in the spectrum of vacuum tubes.^[2]

His work opened the way to atomic emission spectroscopy, leading eventually to the discovery of the hydrogen spectral lines series (Lyman series) by Theodore Lyman in 1914.^[1]