Jules Jamin

Jules Célestin Jamin (1818 to 1886) was a French physicist, born in Termes in the Ardennes, who improved David Brewster's inclined interference plates by developing the Jamin interferometer. He began school at Vouziers, studied at the college in Reims, where he won nine awards in his first year, and in 1838 entered the Ecole normale superieure, obtaining a degree in physical sciences, mathematics and natural sciences. After teaching at Caen, the College Bourbon and the College Louis-le-Grand, he received his doctorate in physics in 1847 for a thesis on the reflection of light on metallic surfaces. From 1844 to 1854 he studied and confirmed Macedonio Melloni's conclusions on energy absorption together with other physicists, and in 1856 he completed his interferometer. He was professor of physics at the Ecole polytechnique from 1852 to 1881, received the Rumford Medal of the Royal Society in 1858 for his work on light and became a professor at the Faculty of Paris in 1863.