High Quality Content by WIKIPEDIA articles! Robert Williams Wood (May 2, 1868 – August 11, 1955) was an American physicist and inventor. He is often cited as being a pivotal contributor to the field of optics and is best known for giving birth to the so-called "black-light effect". Wood`s patents and theoretical work shed much light on the nature and physics of ultra-violet radiation and made possible the myriad of uses of uv-fluorescence which became popular after World War I.