Question: The experiment that played a major role in the general acceptance of the wave theory of light was performed by a man of what profession?

Context articles: NATO Software Engineering Conferences
Thomas Young (scientist)
Ray (optics)
Baien Tomlin
Wave model
Treatise on Light
Young's interference experiment
Airy wave theory
Density wave theory
Experimentum crucis

The NATO Software Engineering Conferences were held in 1968 and 1969.
 The conferences were attended by international experts on software who agreed on defining best practices for software grounded in the application of engineering.
 The result of the conferences were two reports, one for the 1968 conference and the other for the 1969 conference, that defined how software should be developed.
 The conferences played a major role in gaining general acceptance for the term software engineering.
Thomas Young (13 June 1773 – 10 May 1829) was an English polymath and physician.
 Young made notable scientific contributions to the fields of vision, light, solid mechanics, energy, physiology, language, musical harmony, and Egyptology.
 He "made a number of original and insightful innovations" in the decipherment of Egyptian hieroglyphs (specifically the Rosetta Stone) before Jean-François Champollion eventually expanded on his work.
 He was mentioned by, among others, William Herschel, Hermann von Helmholtz, James Clerk Maxwell, and Albert Einstein.
 Young has been described as "The Last Man Who Knew Everything".
In optics a ray is an idealized model of light, obtained by choosing a line that is perpendicular to the wavefronts of the actual light, and that points in the direction of energy flow.
 Rays are used to model the propagation of light through an optical system, by dividing the real light field up into discrete rays that can be computationally propagated through the system by the techniques of ray tracing.
 This allows even very complex optical systems to be analyzed mathematically or simulated by computer.
 Ray tracing uses approximate solutions to Maxwell's equations that are valid as long as the light waves propagate through and around objects whose dimensions are much greater than the light's wavelength.
 Ray theory (geometrical optics) does not describe phenomena such as interference and diffraction, which require wave theory (involving the relative phase of the rays).
Baien Tomlin (4 January 1905 – 1972) was a physicist who became known for research into on-off keying.
 This research led to the continuous wave theory, which was an early method of radio transmission.
 Although the importance of his work for the development of the theory is under debate, it is widely accepted that it provided some of the framework without which modern continuous wave theory would not exist.
 He was born in Westminster, London, England.
In historical linguistics, the wave model or wave theory (German "Wellentheorie") is a model of language change in which a new language feature (innovation) or a new combination of language features spreads from a central region of origin in continuously weakening concentric circles, similar to the waves created when a stone is thrown into a body of water.
 The theory was intended as a substitute for the tree model, which did not seem to be able to explain the existence of some characters, especially in the Germanic languages, by descent from a proto-language.
 At its most ambitious, it is a wholesale replacement for the tree model of languages.
 During the 20th century, the wave model has had little acceptance as a model for language change overall, except for certain cases, such as the study of dialect continua and areal phenomena; it has recently gained more popularity among historical linguists, due to the shortcomings of the Tree model.
Treatise on Light (French: "Traité de la Lumière" ) is a 1690 book written by the Dutch polymath Christiaan Huygens on his wave theory of light.
 Huygens' starting point was Descartes' theory, as presented in the "Dioptrique", which Huygens aimed to supplant.
 Huygens' theory is also seen as the historical rival of Newton's theory, which was presented in the "Opticks".
Young's interference experiment, also called Young's double-slit interferometer, was the original version of the modern double-slit experiment, performed at the beginning of the nineteenth century by Thomas Young.
 This experiment played a major role in the general acceptance of the wave theory of light.
 In Young's own judgement, this was the most important of his many achievements.
In fluid dynamics, Airy wave theory (often referred to as linear wave theory) gives a linearised description of the propagation of gravity waves on the surface of a homogeneous fluid layer.
 The theory assumes that the fluid layer has a uniform mean depth, and that the fluid flow is inviscid, incompressible and irrotational.
 This theory was first published, in correct form, by George Biddell Airy in the 19th century.
Density wave theory or the Lin-Shu density wave theory is a theory proposed by C.C. Lin and Frank Shu in the mid-1960s to explain the spiral arm structure of spiral galaxies.
 Their theory introduces the idea of long-lived quasistatic density waves (also called heavy sound), which are sections of the galactic disk that have greater mass density (about 10–20% greater).
 The theory has also been successfully applied to Saturn's rings.
In the sciences, an experimentum crucis (English: crucial experiment or critical experiment) is an experiment capable of decisively determining whether or not a particular hypothesis or theory is superior to all other hypotheses or theories whose acceptance is currently widespread in the scientific community.
 In particular, such an experiment must typically be able to produce a result that rules out all other hypotheses or theories if true, thereby demonstrating that under the conditions of the experiment ("i.e.", under the same external circumstances and for the same "input variables" within the experiment), those hypotheses and theories are "proven false" but the experimenter's hypothesis "is not ruled out".