In 1920, Schrödinger proposed a mathematical model of color perception based on three main qualities: hue, saturation and lightness.

Hue refers to what color something is, such as red or blue. Saturation describes how vivid the color looks, while lightness determines how bright or dark it appears.

His theory suggested these qualities are not mainly shaped by personal experience or culture, but are built into the way human vision naturally works.

For decades, his work served as a foundation for understanding color perception, according to SciTechDaily.

But while developing algorithms for scientific visualization, a team of researchers at Los Alamos led by computer scientist Roxana Bujack found weaknesses in the mathematical structure behind the theory.

Color pencils on white sheet.Illustration from Pexels

The main problem centered on what scientists call the "neutral axis," the line of gray shades running from black to white. Schrödinger’s model depended on this axis, but he never fully defined it mathematically. Without that missing piece, the theory remained incomplete.

The team said its biggest breakthrough was finding a mathematical way to define that gray axis using geometry alone.

They found that the way people experience color is built into the structure of human vision itself, rather than being mainly learned from the world around them.

"What we conclude is that these color qualities don’t emerge from additional external constructs such as cultural or learned experiences but reflect the intrinsic properties of the color metric itself," Bujack said, as quoted by SciTechDaily.

"This metric geometrically encodes the perceived color distance — that is, how different two colors appear to an observer."

The team also corrected another known issue called the Bezold-Brücke effect, where a color can appear to shift slightly when its brightness increases, according to Interesting Engineering.

The findings were presented at the Eurographics Conference on Visualization and later published in the journal Computer Graphics Forum, the official journal of the Eurographics Association.

Scientists said a better understanding of color perception could improve photography, video technology, scientific imaging and data visualization, helping people interpret complex visual information more accurately.