Léon-Philippe Teisserenc de Bort

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Léon Teisserenc de Bort.jpg

Léon-Philippe Teisserenc de Bort (born November 5, 1855 in Paris , † January 2, 1913 in Cannes ) was a French meteorologist and the discoverer of the stratosphere .

Life

Teisserenc de Bort pioneered the exploration of the atmosphere with the help of unmanned weather balloons . In addition to his discovery of the stratosphere, he identified a region in the earth's atmosphere at an altitude of about 10 to 16 km - today known as the tropopause - in which the temperature no longer drops continuously as in the troposphere , but rather shows a constant temperature. Around the same time, the German meteorologist Richard Assmann made the same discovery.

Between 1892 and 1896 , Teisserenc de Bort was the head of the Administrative Center of National Meteorology - a division of the French government - in Paris. After his resignation from this post he set up a private meteorological observatory in Trappes near Versailles . Here he carried out his experiments with high-flying weather balloons, which he was one of the first to use to study the earth's atmosphere.

After more than 200 balloon experiments, which he often carried out at night to rule out measurement errors due to radiant heat, in 1902 he came to the (incorrect) conclusion that the earth's atmosphere consists of two layers. Teisserenc de Bort called these the troposphere and stratosphere - a convention that is still valid today. The three outer layers, mesosphere , thermosphere (ionosphere) and exosphere, were out of reach of de Bort's weather balloons, so they had to remain hidden from him.

Since 1910 he was a member of the Académie des sciences .

After Teisserenc de Bort's death in 1913, his heirs bequeathed the observatory to the French state so that his research could continue.

literature

  • Jean Mascart: L'étude de la haute atmosphere et les travaux de Léon Teisserenc de Bort , La Nature, 1913, pp. 296-300

Movie

References and comments

  1. ^ List of former members since 1666: Letter T. Académie des sciences, accessed on March 7, 2020 (French).
  2. ↑ In addition to Teisserenc de Bort and Auguste Piccard as explorers of the stratosphere, there are: Carl Friedrich Gauß , whose findings on the earth's magnetic field are presented, Pierre Simon de Laplace , who deciphered the formation of the earth, and Emil Wiechert , inventor of the seismograph. First school radio milestones in science and technology

Web links

personal data
SURNAME Teisserenc de Bort, Léon-Philippe
BRIEF DESCRIPTION French meteorologist and the discoverer of the stratosphere
DATE OF BIRTH November 5, 1855
PLACE OF BIRTH Paris
DATE OF DEATH January 2, 1913
Place of death Cannes