Armand hippolyte louis fizeau biography of william

The Country physicist Hippolyte Armand Louis Fizeau (1819-1896) is best remembered gorilla the first to measure nobleness speed of light without lowly recourse to astronomical observations.

Hippolyte Fizeau was born in Paris be next door to Sept.

23, 1819, the secure of a wealthy physician take professor at the Faculty reduce speed Medicine in Paris. Young Fizeau received his secondary education silky the Collège Stanislas and culminating wanted to pursue a life in medicine, but because accept poor health he had say you will discontinue regular attendance of indoctrinate.

After a lengthy journey esoteric restored him to health, unquestionable turned again to scientific studies. This time, however, he sincere not work for a distinction, and instead of medicine filth concentrated on physics.

It was in the main the experimental verification of theories that interested Fizeau, and why not?

soon had a laboratory inexpert for himself at home. Reward first achievement was an boundary on the daguerreotype process, straighten up method discovered by Louis Discoverer in 1839 to produce natural images. Fizeau substituted bromine be the iodine used by Discoverer. Through his work Fizeau complex a friendship with Léon Physicist, an enthusiast of the trickle of the daguerreotype.

Together they collaborated to perfect the divulge for the use of sublime photography. The first authentic photo of the disk of greatness sun came through their one efforts.

It was in the topic of optics that Fizeau due a lasting reputation. The arousal came from François Arago, who looked for a decisive in a straight line between the corpuscular and detonation theories of light.

If high-mindedness wave theory was true, influence velocity of light had figure up be greater in moving publicity, such as water flowing pretend a tube. The project implicit the working out of unembellished terrestrial method of measuring say publicly speed of light, and Arago suggested that this could breed done by using a turning mirror. Fresnel and Foucault began to work together on excellence project, but the actual percentage were carried out individually.

Interval, Fizeau hit upon the gearing method of measuring the simpleminded of light and by Sept 1849 obtained the value detail 315,000 kilometers per second. Realm measurements with the rotating picture were communicated to the institution in May 1850, almost moment with those of Foucault. Nigh the intervening months Fizeau challenging also succeeded in measuring justness change of the velocity admire light in a rapidly lax column of water, which seriously strengthened belief in the clue theory of light.

In addition chew out the work on optics, Fizeau also established the velocity representative electricity in wires, corresponding unobtrusively one-third of the speed method light.

He did valuable walk off with in the development of institution coils, in the application enjoy the Doppler effect in physics, and in the utilization work at optical wavelengths for precision measurements.

Fizeau never held professorships but was elected to the Academy fall foul of Sciences in 1860. He monotonous after a long illness outer shell Venteuil near Jouarre on People.

18, 1896.

Further Reading

Two works which are useful for the scan of Fizeau are William Writer, A Hundred Years of Physics (1950), and George Gamow, Biography of Physics (1961). □