"And just where have you been until this hour?" demanded his wife, when the wayward husband finally arrived home.
"Down at the office," he replied, "working like a dog."
Baron Jean-Baptiste-Joseph FourierBorn 21 Mar 1768; died 16 May 1830 at age 62. French mathematician, Egyptologist and administrator who exerted strong influence on mathematical physics through his Théorie analytique de la chaleur (1822; The Analytical Theory of Heat). He introduced an infinite mathematical series to aid in solving conduction equations. This analysis technique allows the function of any variable to be expanded into a series of sines of multiples of the variable, which is now known as the Fourier series. His equations spawned many new areas of study in mathematics and physics, including the branch of optics named for him, have subsequently been applied other natural phenomena such as tides, weather and sunspots. |
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