Letters to the Editor

A Series of Comments on Fourier

As always, the March “This Month in Physics History” column in APS News was well documented and very interesting. I would just like to add some information on the biography of Joseph Fourier, for your readers. You write that he “was selected for a new teacher–training school to help rebuild France, where he studied under three of the most prominent French mathematicians, Joseph Louis Lagrange, Pierre-Simon Laplace, and Gaspard Monge".

 May I add several points :
• This school was the first Ecole normale founded in 1794 which is still active as the Ecole normale supérieure (Paris). The magnificent lectures of the three mathematicians have recently been edited as the “leçons de mathématiques” under the direction of Jean Dhombres (Dunod) .

• Joseph Fourier also had classes in natural sciences by the crystallographer René Just Haüy, the chemist Claude Louis Berthollet, and the biologist Louis Daubenton. I recently produced a critical edition of the leçons de Physique, de chimie et d'histoire naturelle. (éditions Rue d'Ulm-Paris).

• All the high-level courses, after a revolutionary troubled period, were given to a large number of students. They indeed intended to provide all of France with school teachers. They still offer  one of the most remarkable pictures of science a few years after the Encyclopedie was published. The lectures were reproduced to be distributed to all the students two weeks after the classes had been given, together with debates. We have recordings of clever questions asked during the debates by Joseph Fourier.

• Fourier was appointed professor at Ecole Polytechnique just  after this initial training. The two “Grandes Ecoles” had been created that same year by the revolutionary Convention.

Etienne Guyon
Paris, France