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| Joseph Fourier |
Do you remember whose picture was displayed near the top of the Eiffel Tower in the count down of the new millennium? The answer is Jules Verne. One of his famous books is '20,000 Leagues under the Sea'. If you don't know what it is, check it out from Netflix for the DVD movie with the same name. It is not only a great story but also the first time submarine was mentioned & created. H. G. Wells and Jules Verne are sometimes called 'The Father of Science Fiction'. Also there is a restaurant Le Jules Verne near the top of the tower. Eiffel Tower was considered to be a monster steel complex or ugly steel piles at the time it was built. When time goes by, it becomes a landmark of Paris and a monument of the city. This shows that it takes time for people to get used to a new idea. The count down of the millennium with his picture is the recognition of his genius & imagination. France is looking for someone like Jules Verne in the new millennium.
I have been in Paris several times & visited the Eiffel Tower. However, I have never known that there are 72 names engraved around the four sides of tower under the first balcony. It is the recognition of 72 French scientists, engineers and mathematicians. I am curious & eager to find out who they are. After the search, I was a little bit disappointed since I only know or familiar with 15 of them, or 20% of the 72. It is nostalgic to read those name we are familiar with while we studied in college especially NTU. Here I list some of them to refresh our memory on the good old days with great scientists and engineers.
Lagrange, Joseph Louis
Lagrange was one of the founders of the calculus of variations.
Lagrange's Identity in Vector Analysis: AXB.(CXD) = (A.C)(B.D) - (A.D)(B.C)
Laplace, Pierre Simon
He is considered to be the Newton of France. He restated and developed the nebular hypothesis of the origin of the solar system and was one of the first scientists to postulate the existence of black holes and the notion of gravitational collapse. Some mathematical transformation, method and tools bear his name: Laplace Transformation, Transformation from time domain to frequency domain in circuit theory, solving differential equations, Laplacian operator.
Lavoisier, Antonine-Laurent de
He was a French nobleman prominent in the histories of chemistry and biology. He named both oxygen (1778) and hydrogen (1783) and predicted silicon (1787). He helped construct the metric system, put together the first extensive list of elements, and helped to reform chemical nomenclature. He was also the first to establish that sulfur was an element (1777) rather than a compound. He also proposed the law of conservation of mass: Matter may change its form or shape, its mass always remains the same. He is generally considered the Father of Modern Chemistry.
Ampere, Andre-Marie
He is generally regarded as one of the main founders of the science of classical electromagnetism, which he referred to as "electrodynamics". The unit of electric current is named after him.
Legendre, Adrien-Marie
He was a French mathematician. Legendre made numerous contributions to mathematics. Well-known and important concepts such as the Legendre polynomials and Legendre transformation are named after him.
Gay-Lussac, Joseph Louis
He was a French chemist and physicist. He is known mostly for laws related to gases, and for his work on alcohol-water mixtures. Gas Law, P/T= constant for fixed V. Idea Gas Law: PV=nRT. I vaguely remember in our high school chemistry class, his name was mentioned as 給 魯 薩 克 . He seemed to invent some method to make sulfuric acid effectively.
Becquerel, Antoine Henri
He discovered Radioactivity by accident as Rontgen did for x-ray. He stumbled on something mysterious & wisely abandoned the original project to pursue this new Radioactivity. A new door was open to physics since then.
Cauchy, Augustin-Louis
He was an early pioneer of Analysis, formulated and proved the theorems of calculus in a rigorous manner. He was the contributor of Mean Value Theorem in Calculus. It is said more concepts and theorems have been named for Cauchy than for any other mathematician.
Fresnel, Augustin Jean
He was a French engineer and physicist who contributed significantly to the establishment of the theory of wave optics. Fresnel studied the behavior of light both theoretically and experimentally. He is noted for Fresnel Lens and Fresnel Integral.
Coulomb, Charles-Augustin de
He was best known for developing Coulomb's law, inverse square law just like gravitation, the definition of the electrostatic force of attraction and repulsion. The SI unit of electric charge, the coulomb, was named after him.
Foucault, Jean Bernard Leon
He was a physicist best known for the invention of the Foucault Pendulum, a device demonstrating the effect of the Earth's rotation. He also made an early measurement of the speed of light, discovered eddy currents, and although he did not invent it, is credited with naming the gyroscope.
Poisson, Simeon Denis
He was a French mathematician, geometer, and physicist. He obtained many important results, but within the elite Académie des Sciences he also was the final leading opponent of the wave theory of light. Poisson Equation was name after him.
Daguerre, Louis-Jacques-Mande
He was a French artist and physicist, recognized for his invention of the daguerreotype process of photography. He became known as one of the fathers of photography.
Fourier, Jean Baptiste Joseph
He was a French mathematician and physicist and best known for initiating the investigation of Fourier series and their applications to problems of heat transfer and vibrations. The Fourier Transform and Fourier's Law are also named in his honor. Fourier is also generally credited with the discovery of the green house effect.
Carnot, Nicolas Leonard Sadi
He was a French military engineer and physicist, often described as the "father of thermodynamics". In his publication, the 1824 monograph Reflections on the Motive Power of Fire, Carnot gave the first successful theory of the maximum efficiency of heat engines. Carnot's work was later used by Rudolf Clausius and Lord Kelvin to formalize the second law of thermodynamics and define the concept of entropy.
It is worth noted that all of them listed above were active in the period of French Revolution, Napoleon expedition to Egypt and the conquest of Europe.
