On this page
Britannica Concise Encyclopedia:
Jean-Baptiste- Joseph Baron Fourier |
For more information on Jean-Baptiste- Joseph Baron Fourier, visit Britannica.com.
|
Featured Videos:
|
Oxford Dictionary of Scientists:
Baron Jean Baptiste Joseph Fourier |
French mathematician (1768–1830)
Fourier, the son of a tailor from Auxerre in France, was educated at the local military school and later at the Ecole Normale in Paris. He held posts at both the Ecole Normale and the Ecole Polytechnique where he was a very effective and influential teacher. In 1798 he accompanied Napoleon on the invasion of Egypt and later contributed to and oversaw the publication of the Description de l'Egypte (1808–25), a massive compilation of the cultural and scientific materials brought back from the expedition.
Fourier's most important mathematical work is contained in his Théorie analytique de la chaleur (1822; The Analytical Theory of Heat), a pioneering analysis of the conduction of heat in solid bodies in terms of infinite trigonometric series, now known as Fourier series. Fourier was led to consider these series when attempting to solve certain boundary-value problems in physics and his interest was always in the physical applications of mathematics rather than in its development for its own sake. His work continues to be extremely important in many areas of mathematical physics, but it has also been developed and generalized to yield a whole new branch of mathematical analysis, namely, the theory of harmonic analysis.
Gale Encyclopedia of Biography:
Baron Jean Baptiste Joseph Fourier |
The French mathematical physicist Jean Baptiste Joseph, Baron Fourier (1768-1830), was the first to discuss in a comprehensive manner the various aspects of the flow of heat in bodies.
On March 21, 1768, J.B.J. Fourier was born in Auxerre. At the age of 8 he lost his father, but the bishop of Auxerre secured his admission to the local military school conducted by Benedictine monks. After 2 years (1787-1789) in the novitiate of the Benedictine abbey of Saint-Benoît-sur-Loire, he left to serve as a lay teacher in his former school at Auxerre.
In 1789 Fourier's first memoir on the numerical solution of algebraic equations was read before the French Academy of Sciences. In 1794 a central teachers' college (École Normale) was established in Paris, and Fourier was one of its first students, but before long he was promoted to the faculty as lecturer. He then received an appointment to the newly founded École Polytechnique, where he first served as chief lecturer on fortifications and later as professor of mathematical analysis.
Fourier was 30 when Napoleon requested his participation as scientific adviser on an expedition to Egypt. Fourier served from 1798 to 1802 as secretary of the Institut d'Égypte, established by Napoleon to explore systematically the archeological riches of that ancient land. His papers, published in the Décade and the Courrier d'Égypte, showed him to be preoccupied with problems that ranged from the general solution of algebraic equations to irrigation projects.
Fourier proved himself a tactful diplomat, and upon his return to France Napoleon appointed him perfect of the department of lsère, with Grenoble as its capital, where he served from 1801 to 1814. There he wrote the work on the mathematical theory of heat conduction which earned him lasting fame. Its first draft was submitted to the academy in 1807; a second, much expanded version, which received the award of the academy in 1812, was entitled Théorie des mouvements de la chaleur dans les corps solides. The first part of it was printed in book form in 1822 under the title Théorie analytique de la chaleur. It was a masterpiece, not only because it covered the hitherto unexplored field of heat propagation but also because it contained the mathematical techniques which later were developed into a special branch of mathematics - Fourier analysis and Fourier integrals.
From 1815 Fourier served as director of the Bureau of Statistics in Paris. In the eyes of the new, royalist regime, Fourier's long service under Napoleon was offset by his opposition to Napoleon upon the latter's return from Elba. In 1817 he became a member of the Academy of Sciences and served from 1822 as its perpetual secretary.
During the course of his career Fourier wrote several papers on statistics, but his lifelong love was the theory of algebraic equations on which he had just completed the manuscript of a book, Analyse des équations déterminées, and a lengthy memoir when he died in Paris on May 16, 1830.
Further Reading
The most detailed biography of Fourier in English is in François Arago, Biographies of Distinguished Scientific Men (trans. 1857). A later biography of Fourier is in Eric Temple Bell, Men of Mathematics (1937). The subsequent development and use of Fourier's outstanding contribution to mathematical physics is given in detail in H.S. Carslaw, Introduction to the Theory of Fourier's Series and Integrals (1906; 3d ed. 1930). Dirk J. Struik, A Concise History of Mathematics (1948; 3d rev. ed. 1967), is recommended for general background.
Columbia Encyclopedia:
Baron Jean Baptiste Joseph Fourier |
Wikipedia on Answers.com:
Joseph Fourier |
| Joseph Fourier | |
|---|---|
 Jean Baptiste Joseph Fourier
|
|
| Born | 21 March 1768 Auxerre, Burgundy, Kingdom of France (now in Yonne, France) |
| Died | 16 May 1830 (aged 62) Paris, Kingdom of France |
| Residence | France |
| Nationality | French |
| Fields | Mathematician, physicist, and historian |
| Institutions | École Normale École Polytechnique |
| Alma mater | École Normale |
| Doctoral advisor | Joseph Lagrange |
| Doctoral students | Gustav Dirichlet Giovanni Plana Claude-Louis Navier |
| Known for | Fourier series Fourier transform Fourier's law of conduction |
Jean Baptiste Joseph Fourier (21 March 1768 – 16 May 1830) was a French mathematician and physicist best known for initiating the investigation of Fourier series and their applications to problems of heat transfer and vibrations. The Fourier transform and Fourier's Law are also named in his honour. Fourier is also generally credited with the discovery of the greenhouse effect.[1]
|
Contents
|
Fourier was born at Auxerre (now in the Yonne département of France), the son of a tailor. He was orphaned at age eight. Fourier was recommended to the Bishop of Auxerre, and through this introduction, he was educated by the Benvenistes of the Convent of St. Mark. The commissions in the scientific corps of the army were reserved for those of good birth, and being thus ineligible, he accepted a military lectureship on mathematics. He took a prominent part in his own district in promoting the French Revolution, and was rewarded by an appointment in 1795 in the École Normale Supérieure, and subsequently by a chair at the École Polytechnique.
Fourier went with Napoleon Bonaparte on his Egyptian expedition in 1798, and was made governor of Lower Egypt [2] and secretary of the Institut d'Égypte. Cut off from France by the English fleet, he organized the workshops on which the French army had to rely for their munitions of war. He also contributed several mathematical papers to the Egyptian Institute (also called the Cairo Institute) which Napoleon founded at Cairo, with a view of weakening English influence in the East. After the British victories and the capitulation of the French under General Menou in 1801, Fourier returned to France, and was made prefect of Isère, and it was while there that he made his experiments on the propagation of heat.
.jpg)
In 1806 he quit the post of full professor at the École Polytechnique because Napoleon sent him to Grenoble. He was replaced by Siméon Denis Poisson.
Fourier moved to England in 1816. Later he returned to France, and in 1822 succeeded Jean Baptiste Joseph Delambre as Permanent Secretary of the French Academy of Sciences. In 1830, he was elected a foreign member of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences.
In 1830, his diminished health began to take its toll:
Fourier had already experienced, in Egypt and Grenoble, some attacks of aneurism of the heart. At Paris, it was impossible to be mistaken with respect to the primary cause of the frequent suffocations which he experienced. A fall, however, which he sustained on the 4th of May, 1830, while descending a flight of stairs, aggravated the malady to an extent beyond what could have been ever feared.[4]
Shortly after this event, he died in his bed on 16 May, 1830.
Fourier was buried in the Père Lachaise Cemetery in Paris, a tomb decorated with an Egyptian motif to reflect his position as secretary of the Cairo Institute, and his collation of the landmark Description de l'Égypte. His name is one of the 72 names inscribed on the Eiffel Tower.
In 1822 Fourier presented his work on heat flow in Théorie analytique de la chaleur (The Analytic Theory of heat),[5] in which he based his reasoning on Newton's law of cooling, namely, that the flow of heat between two adjacent molecules is proportional to the extremely small difference of their temperatures. This book was translated[6], with editorial 'corrections',[7] into English 56 years later by Freeman (1878).[8] The book was also edited, with many editorial corrections, by Darboux and republished in French in 1888.[7]
.jpg)
There were three important contributions in this work, one purely mathematical, two essentially physical. In mathematics, Fourier claimed that any function of a variable, whether continuous or discontinuous, can be expanded in a series of sines of multiples of the variable. Though this result is not correct, Fourier's observation that some discontinuous functions are the sum of infinite series was a breakthrough. The question of determining when a Fourier series converges has been fundamental for centuries. Joseph Louis Lagrange had given particular cases of this (false) theorem, and had implied that the method was general, but he had not pursued the subject. Johann Dirichlet was the first to give a satisfactory demonstration of it with some restrictive conditions.
One physical contribution in the book was the concept of dimensional homogeneity in equations; i.e. an equation can be formally correct only if the dimensions match on either side of the equality. Fourier also developed dimensional analysis, the method of representing physical units, such as velocity and acceleration, by their fundamental dimensions of mass, time, and length, to obtain relations between them.[9] The other physical contribution was Fourier's proposal of his partial differential equation for conductive diffusion of heat. This equation is now taught to every student of mathematical physics.
Fourier left an unfinished work on determinate equations which was edited by Claude-Louis Navier and published in 1831. This work contains much original matter — in particular, there is a demonstration of Fourier's theorem on the position of the roots of an algebraic equation. Joseph Louis Lagrange had shown how the roots of an algebraic equation might be separated by means of another equation whose roots were the squares of the differences of the roots of the original equation. François Budan, in 1807 and 1811, had enunciated the theorem generally known by the name of Fourier, but the demonstration was not altogether satisfactory. Fourier's proof is the same as that usually given in textbooks on the theory of equations. The final solution of the problem was given in 1829 by Jacques Charles François Sturm.
In the 1820s Fourier calculated that an object the size of the Earth, and at its distance from the Sun, should be considerably colder than the planet actually is if warmed only by the effects of incoming solar radiation. He examined various possible sources of the additional observed heat in articles published in 1824[10] and 1827.[11] While he ultimately suggested that interstellar radiation might be responsible for a large portion of the additional warmth, Fourier's consideration of the possibility that the Earth's atmosphere might act as an insulator of some kind is widely recognized as the first proposal of what is now known as the greenhouse effect.[12]
In his articles Fourier referred to an experiment by de Saussure[13], who lined a vase with blackened cork. Into the cork, he inserted several panes of transparent glass, separated by intervals of air. Midday sunlight was allowed to enter at the top of the vase through the glass panes. The temperature became more elevated in the more interior compartments of this device.[1]. Fourier concluded that gases in the atmosphere could form a stable barrier like the glass panes. This conclusion may have contributed to the later use of the metaphor of the 'greenhouse effect' to refer to the processes that determine atmospheric temperatures. Fourier noted that the actual mechanisms that determine the temperatures of the atmosphere included convection, which was not present in de Saussure's experimental device.
 |
Wikiquote has a collection of quotations related to: Joseph Fourier |
 |
Wikisource has the text of a 1906 New International Encyclopedia article about Joseph Fourier. |
| Academic offices | ||
|---|---|---|
| Preceded by Pierre-Édouard Lémontey |
Seat 5 Académie française 1826–1830 |
Succeeded by Victor Cousin |
This entry is from Wikipedia, the leading user-contributed encyclopedia. It may not have been reviewed by professional editors (see full disclaimer)
 | Fourier series (infinite series) |
| Fourier analysis |
| Georg Simon Ohm (German physicist) |
 | When did Joseph Fourier die? Read answer... |
| How did Joseph Fourier die? Read answer... |
| What is the birthplace of Joseph fourier? Read answer... |
 | Where did Joseph Fourier go to school? |
| What Joseph Fourier hardships? |
| What did Joseph Fourier make? |
Copyrights:
 |
 | Britannica Concise Encyclopedia. Britannica Concise Encyclopedia. © 1994-2012 Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc. All rights reserved. Read more |
 |
| Oxford Dictionary of Scientists. A Dictionary of Scientists. Copyright © Market House Books Ltd 1993, 1999, 2003. All rights reserved. Read more |
 |
| Gale Encyclopedia of Biography. Gale Encyclopedia of Biography. © 2006 by The Gale Group, Inc. All rights reserved. Read more |
 |
| Columbia Encyclopedia. The Columbia Electronic Encyclopedia, Sixth Edition Copyright © 2012, Columbia University Press. Licensed from Columbia University Press. All rights reserved. www.cc.columbia.edu/cu/cup/. Read more |
 |
| Wikipedia on Answers.com. This article is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License. It uses material from the Wikipedia article Joseph Fourier. Read more |
Mentioned in
