Short answers, pulled from the story.
Isaac Newton performed an experiment with a glass prism in 1671 that demonstrated white light is a composite of all visible colors. He split the light into a continuous spectrum ranging from approximately 390 nanometers to 700 naneters. This discovery proved that color is a visual perception generated by the brain rather than an inherent property of matter.
A human with normal vision can distinguish roughly 10 million different colors. This ability is enabled by three types of cone cells in the retina that respond to light at approximately 450 nanometers, 540 nanometers, and 570 nanometers. The brain interprets the combined output of these overlapping signals to generate the perception of millions of distinct colors.
Neurobiologist Semir Zeki identified the V4 region of the posterior inferior temporal cortex as the primary hub for color processing. This area contains millimeter-sized modules called globs where color is first processed into the full range of hues found in color space. The V4 region also processes orientation-selective cells that link color perception with the form and shape of objects.
The International Commission on Illumination developed the CIE 1931 color space as a mathematical model that maps out the space of observable colors. This model allows every individual color to be specified with a set of three numbers. It is essential for color management in digital media to ensure that colors remain consistent across different devices.
The 1969 study Basic Color Terms: Their Universality and Evolution by Brent Berlin and Paul Kay describes a pattern in naming basic colors across languages. It shows that all languages with six basic colors include black, white, red, green, blue, and yellow. The pattern holds up to a set of twelve, including gray, pink, orange, purple, brown, and azure.