Fourier was born inAuxerre (now in theYonnedépartement of France), the son of atailor. He wasorphaned at the age of nine. Fourier was recommended to theBishop of Auxerre and, through this introduction, he was educated by theBenedictine Order 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 theFrench Revolution, serving on the local Revolutionary Committee. He was imprisoned briefly during theTerror but, in 1795, was appointed to theÉcole Normale and subsequently succeededJoseph-Louis Lagrange at theÉcole Polytechnique.
Fourier accompaniedNapoleon Bonaparte on hisEgyptian expedition in 1798, as scientific adviser, and was appointed secretary of theInstitut d'Égypte. Cut off from France by the British 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 atCairo, with a view of weakening British influence in the East. After the British victories and the capitulation of the French underJacques-François Menou in 1801, Fourier returned to France.
1820 watercolorcaricatures of French mathematiciansAdrien-Marie Legendre (left) andJoseph Fourier (right) by French artistJulien-Léopold Boilly, watercolor portrait numbers 29 and 30 ofAlbum de 73 Portraits-Charge Aquarellés des Membres de I’Institut[3]
In 1801,[4]Napoleon appointed FourierPrefect (Governor) of theDepartment of Isère inGrenoble, where he oversaw road construction and other projects. However, Fourier had previously returned home from the Napoleon expedition to Egypt to resume his academic post as professor atÉcole Polytechnique whenNapoleon decided otherwise in his remark
... the Prefect of the Department of Isère having recently died, I would like to express my confidence in citizen Fourier by appointing him to this place.[4]
Hence being faithful to Napoleon, he took the office of Prefect.[4] It was while at Grenoble that he began to experiment on the propagation of heat. He presented his paperOn the Propagation of Heat in Solid Bodies to the Paris Institute on 21 December 1807. He also contributed to the monumentalDescription de l'Égypte.[5]
In 1830, his diminished health began to take its toll:
Fourier had already experienced, in Egypt and Grenoble, some attacks ofaneurysm 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.[7]
Shortly after this event, he died in his bed on 16 May 1830.
Fourier was buried in thePère Lachaise Cemetery in Paris, a tomb decorated with an Egyptian motif to reflect his position as secretary of the Cairo Institute, and his collation ofDescription de l'Égypte. His name is one of the72 names inscribed on the Eiffel Tower.
A bronze statue was erected in Auxerre in 1849, but it was melted down for armaments during World War II.Joseph Fourier University in Grenoble was named after him.
In 1822, Fourier published his treatise onheat flow inThéorie analytique de la chaleur (The Analytical Theory of Heat),[8] in which he based his reasoning onNewton's law of cooling, namely, that the flow of heat between two adjacent particles is proportional to the extremely small difference of their temperatures. This treatise was translated,[9] with editorial 'corrections',[10] into English 56 years later by Freeman (1878).[11] The treatise was also edited, with many editorial corrections, by mathematicianJean Gaston Darboux and republished in French in 1888.[10]
There were three important contributions in this publication, one purely mathematical, two essentially physical. In mathematics, Fourier claimed that any function of a variable, whethercontinuous ordiscontinuous, can be expanded in a series ofsines of multiples of the variable. Though this result is not correct without additional conditions, 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.Peter Gustav Lejeune Dirichlet was the first to give a satisfactory demonstration of it with some restrictive conditions. This work provides the foundation for what is today known as theFourier transform.
One important physical contribution in the book was the concept ofdimensional homogeneity in equations; i.e. an equation can be formally correct only if the dimensions match on either side of the equality; Fourier made important contributions todimensional analysis.[12] The other physical contribution was Fourier's proposal of hispartial differential equation for conductive diffusion of heat,often called theheat equation. This equation is now taught to every student of mathematical physics and is the most basic example of aparabolic partial differential equation.
Fourier left an unfinished work on determining and locating real roots of polynomials, which was edited byClaude-Louis Navier and published in 1831. This work contains much original matter—in particular,Fourier's theorem on polynomial real roots, published in 1820.[13][14]François Budan, in 1807 and 1811, had published independently histheorem (also known by the name of Fourier), which is very close to Fourier's theorem (each theorem is a corollary of the other). Fourier's proof[13] is the one that was usually given, during 19th century, in textbooks on the theory of equations.[a] Acomplete solution of the problem was given in 1829 byJacques Charles François Sturm.[15]
The grave of Jean-Baptiste Joseph Fourier in Père Lachaise cemetery, Paris
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 by only the effects of incoming solar radiation. He examined various possible sources of the additional observed heat in articles published in 1824[16] and 1827.[17] However, in the end, because of the large 33-degree difference between his calculations and observations, Fourier mistakenly believed that there is a significant contribution of radiation from interstellar space. Still, 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 thegreenhouse effect,[18] although Fourier never called it that.[19][20]
In his articles, Fourier referred to an experiment byHorace Bénédict de Saussure, 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. Fourier noted that if gases in the atmosphere could form a stable barrier like the glass panes they would have a similar effect on planetary temperatures.[17] 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.[21] Fourier noted that the actual mechanisms that determine the temperatures of the atmosphere includedconvection, which was not present in de Saussure's experimental device.
^These questions were no more considered as important from the end of 19th century to the second half of 20th century, where they reappeared for the need ofcomputer algebra.
^Boilly, Julien-Léopold. (1820).Album de 73 Portraits-Charge Aquarelle’s des Membres de I’Institute (watercolor portrait #29). Biliotheque de l’Institut de France.
^Freeman, A. (1878).The Analytical Theory of Heat, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge UK, cited by Truesdell, C.A. (1980),The Tragicomical History of Thermodynamics, 1822–1854, Springer, New York,ISBN0-387-90403-4, page 52.
^abTruesdell, C.A. (1980).The Tragicomical History of Thermodynamics, 1822–1854, Springer, New York,ISBN0-387-90403-4, page 52.
^Gonzalez, Rafael; Woods, Richard E. (2010).Digital Image Processing (Third ed.). Upper Saddle River: Pearson Prentice Hall. p. 200.ISBN978-0-13-234563-7.
^Mason, Stephen F.: A History of the Sciences (Simon & Schuster, 1962), p. 169.
^Fleming, J R (1999). "Joseph Fourier, the "greenhouse effect", and the quest for a universal theory of terrestrial temperatures".Endeavour.23 (2):72–75.doi:10.1016/s0160-9327(99)01210-7.
^Osman, Jheni (2011),100 Ideas that Changed the World, Random House, p. 65,ISBN9781446417485,[Fourier] didn't call his discovery the greenhouse effect but future scientists named it that after an experiment by [de Saussure] which influenced Fourier's work.
Fourier, J. Éloge historique de Sir William Herschel, prononcé dans la séance publique de l'Académie royale des sciences le 7 Juin, 1824. Historie de l'Académie Royale des Sciences de l'Institut de France, tome vi., année 1823, p. lxi.[Pg 227]
.jpg)
