Joseph Fourier

Jean-Baptiste Joseph Fourier was a French mathematician and physicist born in Auxerre, Burgundy, in 1768, who died in 1830. He is best known for initiating the investigation of Fourier series, which developed into Fourier analysis and harmonic analysis, and for applying them to problems of heat transfer and vibrations. The Fourier transform and Fourier's law of conduction carry his name, and he is generally credited with the discovery of the greenhouse effect. He was appointed to the École Normale in 1795 and succeeded Joseph-Louis Lagrange at the École Polytechnique, accompanied Napoleon Bonaparte to Egypt in 1798 as scientific adviser, and in 1822 became Permanent Secretary of the French Academy of Sciences.