One could easily prepare a list of several hundred primary references to the scientific literature on spectral measurements of the optical properties of water and compilations of water's refractive index and absorption coefficient. In this critique, however, we only highlight such activities during the past century. Readers interested in more detail should consult bibliographies in the references cited here. To those who contributed to the scientific literature on the optical properties of water and are not explicitly acknowledged here, we apologize. We conclude the critique with two of our previously unpublished compilations of n and k for water.
M. R. Querry, D. M. Wieliczka, D. J. Segelstein, "Water (H2O)," Handbook of Optical Constants of Solids II, , 1059-1077 (1991).