Abstract
The importance of the Fourier transform as a fundamental tool for crystallography is well known in the field. However, the complete legacy of Jean-Baptiste Joseph Fourier (1768-1830) as a pioneer Egyptologist and premier mathematician and physicist of his time, and the implications of his work in other scientific fields, is less well known. Significantly, his theoretical and experimental work on phenomena related to the transmission of heat founded the mathematical study of irreversible phenomena and introduced the flow of time in physico-chemical processes and geology, with its implications for biological evolution. Fourier's insights are discussed in contrast to the prevalent notion of reversible dynamic time in the early 20th century, which was dominated by Albert Einstein's (1875-1953) theory of general relativity versus the philosophical notion of durée proposed by the French philosopher Henri-Louis Bergson (1859-1941). The current status of the mathematical description of irreversible processes by Ilya Romanovich Prigogine (1917-2003) is briefly discussed as part of the enduring legacy of the pioneering work of J.-B. J. Fourier, first established nearly two centuries ago, in numerous scientific endeavors.
Highlights
Two centuries ago, in 1822, Jean-Baptiste Joseph Fourier published his milestone Theorie analytique de la chaleur, published much later translated into English as The Analytical Theory of Heat (Fourier, 1878)
The application of ‘Fourier methods’ to solve crystal structures has been covered by Isaacs (2016) in the context of the history of experimental phasing methods in macromolecular crystallography
Fourier, which extends well beyond his critical role in our field of study and the myriad other scientific endeavors in which the Fourier transform is used in its different formulations
Summary
In 1822, Jean-Baptiste Joseph Fourier published his milestone Theorie analytique de la chaleur, published much later translated into English as The Analytical Theory of Heat (Fourier, 1878). In an earlier essay, submitted to the Royale Academie des Sciences as an entry for the 1811 prize competition on the subject of the propagation of heat in solid bodies (published by the Royal Academy in 1826; Fourier, 1826), Fourier presented the notion that it is possible to express any ‘irregular’ function (including discontinuous functions) as a sum of ‘waves’ represented by a sum of sine and cosine functions The application of this mathematical concept to the periodic distribution of X-ray scatterers in a crystalline array hypothesized by W. Fourier, which extends well beyond his critical role in our field of study and the myriad other scientific endeavors in which the Fourier transform is used in its different formulations
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