Joseph Fourier

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Joseph Fourier, portrait of Julien Léopold Boilly (1796)

Jean Baptiste Joseph Fourier (born March 21, 1768 near Auxerre , † May 16, 1830 in Paris ) was a French mathematician and physicist .

Life

Fourier was the son of a tailor and was already at the age of 10 years by the death of his parents for orphans . His further upbringing first took place in the boarding school of the organist of the cathedral of Auxerre Joseph Pallais, until he could switch to the military school of Auxerre. There he developed a strong interest in mathematics and at the age of 14 he had already studied the six-volume Cours de mathématiques by Étienne Bézout . In 1783 he received a prize for a work on Charles Bossuts Mécanique en général . In 1787 Fourier decided to pursue a spiritual career and switched to the school of the Benedictine abbey of Saint-Benoît-sur-Loire . However, he continued to cultivate his interest in mathematics. With the outbreak of the French Revolution in 1789, Fourier left Saint-Benoît-sur-Loire again and became a teacher at the military school in Auxerre, where he had received his education. Fourier was politically active, including as chairman of the local revolutionary committee in his hometown of Auxerre. This political engagement led to his imprisonment during the reign of terror and narrowly escaping the guillotine . At the age of 26, in 1795, he moved to the École normal supérieure in Paris , where his mentors included Joseph-Louis Lagrange , Gaspard Monge and Pierre-Simon de Laplace , and in 1797 Fourier succeeded Lagrange as professor for analysis and mechanics at the École polytechnique in Paris.

Bust of Fouriers in Grenoble

In 1798 he accompanied Napoleon Bonaparte with other French scientists on his Egyptian expedition . There he took over the secretariat of the Institut d'Égypte , organized archaeological expeditions and worked on building a French-style administration in Egypt. In 1801, Fourier returned to France with the remains of the French expeditionary force and wanted to resume his professorship at the École polytechnique . However, Napoleon, who had learned to appreciate Fourier's organizational skills, made him prefect of the Isère department based in Grenoble in 1802 . Fourier was not very happy to leave the academic world in Paris, but complied with Napoleon's wishes. As prefect, he earned services to drain the swamps at Bourgoin-Jallieu and had a fixed road connection between Grenoble and Turin built. In Grenoble he continued to work scientifically, including as co-author of the Description de l'Égypte . There he also met the young Jean-François Champollion , who was introduced to him as a gifted student at the Académie de Grenoble . Fourier showed Champollion a copy of the inscription on the stone from Rosette , and he was so impressed by it that he decided to decipher the Egyptian hieroglyphs as his life's work. Fourier also later supported Champollion in his training, and he finally succeeded in deciphering the inscription on the Rosetta stone between 1822 and 1824. In 1808 Fourier was promoted to Baron de l'Empire . During the reign of the Hundred Days in 1815, Napoleon appointed him prefect of the Rhône department . Fourier lived in Paris from 1815 and was secretary for life at the Académie des Sciences .

Fourier's tomb in the Père Lachaise cemetery in Paris in the style of an ancient Egyptian monument

In addition, he also dealt with physics, namely with heat propagation in solids ( Fourier's law ). A relevant treatise was awarded a prize by the Paris Academy in 1807. In addition to the derivation of the equations, it contained a solution using Fourier series . The most important work in this context is the Analytical Theory of Heat (1822). In an article from 1824 he described for the first time the essential mechanisms of a hypothetical model greenhouse effect , the criteria of which he compared to the atmosphere he worked out (but without using the term). In his articles, Fourier referred to an experiment by Saussure that lined a vase with blackened cork. He inserted several panes of transparent glass into the cork, separated by air sections. Midday sunlight was able to penetrate through the panes of glass at the top of the vase. The temperature inside this unit has been increased. Fourier came to the conclusion that gases in the atmosphere had to form a stable barrier like the glass panes. In order to be able to store heat in the atmosphere at all, Fourier found that the actual mechanisms that determine the temperatures of the atmosphere contained convection, which was not present in Saussure's experimental device. In the 1820s, Fourier calculated that an object the size of the earth and at its distance from the sun, warmed only by solar radiation, should be considerably colder than the earth actually is. He examined various possible sources of the additional heat observed in articles published in 1824 and 1827. While ultimately suggesting that interstellar radiation could be responsible for a large part of the extra heat, Fourier contemplated the possibility that Earth's atmosphere could act as an insulator from extraterrestrial space.

With the Fourier analysis he laid the foundation for the progress of modern physics and technology.

In 1826 he was accepted as a corresponding member of the Prussian Academy of Sciences . Since 1823 he was a foreign member ( Foreign Member ) of the Royal Society . In 1829 he became an honorary member of the Russian Academy of Sciences in Saint Petersburg .

His name is immortalized on the Eiffel Tower (see the list of 72 names on the Eiffel Tower ).

The University of Joseph Fourier Grenoble I bears his name, and the lunar crater Fourier , the asteroid (10101) Fourier and the island Île Fourier are named after him.

Fonts

  • Oeuvres , 2 volumes, Paris, Gauthier-Villars 1888, 1890, publisher Jean Gaston Darboux , volume 2 at Gallica
  • Theory analytique de la chaleur . Paris 1822. Online at the Internet archive.org
  • Mémoire sur les températures du globe terrestre et les espaces planétaires , Mémoires de l'Academie royal des Sciences de l'Institut de France, Paris, Volume 7, 1827, pp. 570–604 (see individual reference 1)
  • Analysis of the equations déterminées . ( Edited posthumously by Navier ; Paris 1831).
    • The solution of the particular equations. (Analysis of the Equations Déterminées, Paris 881). Translated and edited by Alfred Loewy. Publisher: Wilhelm Engelmann, Leipzig 1902 - online in the Internet archive

literature

  • Jean Dhombres, Jean-Bernard Robert Joseph Fourier 1768-1830: créateur de la physique-mathématique , Paris, Belin, 1998
  • Ivor Grattan-Guinness , J. Ravetz Joseph Fourier 1768-1830. A survey on his life and work , MIT Press 1972
  • same, article Fourier in Dictionary of Scientific Biography ; originally as: Jermone R. Ravetz, I. Grattan-Guinness: Fourier, Jean Baptiste Joseph . In: Charles Coulston Gillispie (Ed.): Dictionary of Scientific Biography . tape 5 : Emil Fischer - Gottlieb Haberlandt . Charles Scribner's Sons, New York 1972, p. 93-99 .
  • J. Herivel Joseph Fourier. The man and the physicist . Oxford, Clarendon Press 1975
  • L. Charbonneau Catalog des manuscripts de Joseph Fourier , Cahiers d´histoire et de philosophie des sciences, Volume 42, 1994 (Charbonneau also wrote his dissertation on Fourier)
  • François Arago Éloge de Joseph Fourier , Memoirs de l´Academie des Sciences, Volume 14, 1838, LXIX (also in Arago Oeuvres , Volume 5, Paris 1854)
  • Biographies of Distinguished Scientific Men by François Arago Project Gutenberg e-book
  • Victor Cousin Notes biographiques sur M. Fourier , Paris 1831 (and in Cousin Fragments et souvenirs , 3rd edition, Paris 1857, p. 283)

See also

Web links

Commons : Joseph Fourier  - Collection of Images, Videos and Audio Files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Mémoire sur les températures du globe terrestre et des espaces planétaires , Annales de Chimie et de Physique 1824, slightly changed in 1827 in the Mémoires de l'Academie royal des Sciences de l'Institut de France , Volume 7, pp. 570–604, reprinted and in Fourier's works 1890, Volume 2, by Gallica
  2. ↑ WM Connolley: Translation by WM Connolley of: Fourier 1827: MEMOIRE sur les temperatures du globe terrestre et des espaces planetaires .
  3. ^ Fourier, JBJ: Remarques Générales Sur Les Températures, in: Du Globe Terrestre Et Des Espaces Planétaires . In: Burgess (ed.): Annales de Chimie et de Physique . tape 27 , 1824, p. 136-167 .
  4. ↑ Fourier, JBJ: Memoire Sur Les Températures Du Globe Terrestre Et Des Espaces Planétaires . In: Mémoires de l'Académie Royale des Sciences . tape 7 , 1827, pp. 569-604 .
  5. ^ Members of the previous academies. Joseph (Jean Baptiste Joseph) Baron de Fourier. Berlin-Brandenburg Academy of Sciences and Humanities , accessed on March 24, 2015 .
  6. ^ Entry on Fourier, Jean Baptiste Joseph (1768 - 1830) in the archives of the Royal Society , London
  7. ^ Foreign members of the Russian Academy of Sciences since 1724. Jean Baptiste Joseph Fourier. Russian Academy of Sciences, accessed November 1, 2015 (Russian).
personal data
SURNAME Fourier, Joseph
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Fourier, Jean Baptiste Joseph (full name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION French mathematician and physicist
DATE OF BIRTH March 21, 1768
PLACE OF BIRTH Auxerre
DATE OF DEATH May 16, 1830
Place of death Paris