20 Facts About Joseph Fourier

Joseph Fourier is generally credited with the discovery of the greenhouse effect.

Joseph Fourier was born in Auxerre, the son of a tailor.

Joseph Fourier was recommended to the Bishop of Auxerre and, through this introduction, he was educated by the Benedictine Order of the Convent of St Mark.

Joseph Fourier took a prominent part in his own district in promoting the French Revolution, serving on the local Revolutionary Committee.

Joseph Fourier was imprisoned briefly during the Terror but, in 1795, was appointed to the Ecole Normale and subsequently succeeded Joseph-Louis Lagrange at the Ecole Polytechnique.

Joseph Fourier accompanied Napoleon Bonaparte on his Egyptian expedition in 1798, as scientific adviser, and was appointed secretary of the Institut d'Egypte.

Joseph Fourier contributed several mathematical papers to the Egyptian Institute which Napoleon founded at Cairo, with a view of weakening British influence in the East.

However, Joseph Fourier had previously returned home from the Napoleon expedition to Egypt to resume his academic post as professor at Ecole Polytechnique when Napoleon decided otherwise in his remark.

Joseph Fourier presented his paper On the Propagation of Heat in Solid Bodies to the Paris Institute on 21 December 1807.

Joseph Fourier had already experienced, in Egypt and Grenoble, some attacks of aneurysm of the heart.

Joseph Fourier was buried in the Pere 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 Description de l'Egypte.

Joseph Fourier's name is one of the 72 names inscribed on the Eiffel Tower.

In 1822, Joseph Fourier published his treatise on heat flow in Theorie analytique de la chaleur, in which he based his reasoning on Newton's law of cooling, namely, that the flow of heat between two adjacent particles is proportional to the extremely small difference of their temperatures.

In mathematics, Joseph 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.

Joseph Fourier left an unfinished work on determining and locating real roots of polynomials, which was edited by Claude-Louis Navier and published in 1831.

Joseph Fourier's proof is the one that was usually given, during 19th century, in textbooks on the theory of equations.

Joseph Fourier examined various possible sources of the additional observed heat in articles published in 1824 and 1827.

However, in the end, because of the large 33-degree difference between his calculations and observations, Joseph Fourier mistakenly believed that there is a significant contribution of radiation from interstellar space.

Joseph 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.

Joseph 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.