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Joseph Plateau
Joseph Plateau
	Plateau in 1843
Born	14 October 1801; Brussels, French Republic
Died	15 September 1883 (aged 81); Ghent, Belgium
Nationality	Belgian
Alma mater	University of Liège
Known for	Physics of soap bubbles (Plateau's laws), Plateau's problem
	Scientific career
Institutions	Ghent University
Doctoral advisor	Adolphe Quetelet

Joseph Antoine Ferdinand Plateau (French pronunciation: [ʒozɛf ɑ̃twan fɛʁdinɑ̃ plato]; 14 October 1801 – 15 September 1883) was a Belgian physicist and mathematician. He was one of the first people to demonstrate the illusion of a moving image.^[3] To do this, he used counterrotating disks with repeating drawn images in small increments of motion on one and regularly spaced slits in the other. He called this device of 1832 the phenakistiscope.

Biography

Plateau was born on 14 October 1801,^[1] in Brussels.^[4] His father, Antoine Plateau (fr) born in Tournai, was a talented flower painter.^[5] At the age of six, the younger Plateau already could read, making him a child prodigy in those times. While attending primary school, he was particularly impressed by a lesson of physics; enchanted by the experiments he observed, he vowed to discover their secrets someday.^[4] Plateau spent his school holidays in Marche-les-Dames, with his uncle and his family; his cousin and playfellow was Auguste Payen, who later became an architect and the principal designer of the Belgian railways.^[4] At the age of fourteen, he lost his father and mother; the trauma caused by this loss made him fall ill.^[6]

On 27 August 1840, Plateau married Augustine–Thérèse–Aimée–Fanny Clavareau,^[7] and they had a son a year later.^[8] His daughter Alice Plateau married Gustave Van der Mensbrugghe [nl] in 1871, who became his collaborator and later his first biographer.^[9]

Fascinated by the persistence of luminous impressions on the retina, Plateau performed an experiment in which he gazed directly into the Sun for 25 seconds. He lost his eyesight later in his life and attributed the loss to this experiment. However, this may not have been the case, and he may have instead had chronic uveitis.^[10]

Plateau became a foreign member of the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1872.^[11]

Plateau died in Ghent in 1883.

Academic career

Plateau studied at the State University of Liège, where he graduated as a doctor of physical and mathematical sciences in 1829.^[12]

In 1827, Plateau became a teacher of mathematics at the "Atheneum" school in Brussels.^[12] In 1835, he was appointed Professor of Physics and Applied Physics at the State University in Ghent.^[13]

Research

Optics

In 1829, Plateau submitted his doctoral thesis to his mentor Adolphe Quetelet for advice. It contained only 27 pages but formulated a great number of fundamental conclusions. It contained the first results of his research into the effect of colours on the retina (duration, intensity, and colour), his mathematical research into the intersections of revolving curves (locus), the observation of the distortion of moving images, and the reconstruction of distorted images through counter revolving discs (he dubbed these anorthoscopic discs).^[14] In 1832, Plateau invented an early stroboscopic device, the "phenakistiscope", the first device to give the illusion of a moving image. It consisted of two disks, one with small equidistant radial windows, through which the viewer could look, and another containing a sequence of images. When the two disks rotated at the correct speed, the synchronization of the windows and the images created an animated effect. The projection of stroboscopic photographs, creating the illusion of motion, eventually led to the development of cinema.^[15]

Plateau's problem

Plateau also studied the phenomena of capillary action and surface tension.^[16] The mathematical problem of existence of a minimal surface with a given boundary is named after him. He conducted extensive studies of soap films and formulated Plateau's laws, which describe the structures formed by such films in foams.

Works

Statique expérimentale et théorique des liquides soumis aux seules forces moléculaires (in French). Vol. 1. Paris: Gauthier-Villars. 1873.
- Statique expérimentale et théorique des liquides soumis aux seules forces moléculaires (in French). Vol. 2. Paris: Gauthier-Villars. 1873.

In popular culture

On 14 October 2019, the search engine Google commemorated Plateau with a Doodle on his 218th birth anniversary. This doodle was created by animator, filmmaker, and Doodler Olivia Huynh with inspiration and help from Diana Tran and Tom Tabanao. It is the first Google Doodle with different artwork showing up across different device displays—desktop, mobile, and the Google App.^[17]

References

^ ^a ^b O'Connor, John J.; Robertson, Edmund F., "Joseph Antoine Ferdinand Plateau", MacTutor History of Mathematics Archive, University of St Andrews
^ (Van der Mensbrugghe 1885, p. 389): in this reference, written by his son in Law, Ghent is written Gand, which is its French name.
^ "Goethe's Theory of Colours". theoryofcolor.org. Archived from the original on 8 October 2021. Retrieved 19 May 2016. Note to Paragraph 23
^ ^a ^b ^c (Van der Mensbrugghe 1885, p. 390)
^ (Van der Mensbrugghe 1885, p. 390): this ample biographical paper is used in this section as the main reference.
^ (Van der Mensbrugghe 1885, p. 391)
^ Commonly referred as Fanny Clavareau: see the Museum for the History of Sciences (2001), web site section "Plateau's blindness".
^ (Van der Mensbrugghe 1885, p. 400)
^ (Verschaffelt 1946, p. 30)
^ (De Laey 2002, pp. 915–920)
^ "Joseph Antoine Ferdinand Plateau (1801–1883)". Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences. Retrieved 19 July 2015.
^ ^a ^b (Van der Mensbrugghe 1885, p. 396)
^ Wautier, Kristel; et al. (2012). "The Life and Work of Joseph Plateau: Father of Film and Discoverer of Surface Tension". Physics in Perspective. 14 (3): 258. Bibcode:2012PhP....14..258W. doi:10.1007/s00016-012-0087-8. ISSN 1422-6944. OCLC 5659011683. S2CID 123139853.
^ See the Museum for the History of Sciences (2001), web site section "Anorthoscope".
^ See the Museum for the History of Sciences (2001), web site section "Phenakistiscope".
^ Plateau, J. (1873). Statique expérimentale et théorique des liquides soumis aux seules forces moléculaires [Experimental and theoretical statics of liquids subject to only molecular forces] (in French). Paris, France: Gauthier-Villars. OCLC 809459725. vol. 1 and vol. 2.
^ "Joseph Antoine Ferdinand Plateau's 218th Birthday". Google. 14 October 2019. Retrieved 14 October 2019.

Biographical references

De Laey, J. J. (2002). "De Blindheid van Joseph Plateau. Mythe en realiteit" [The blindness of Joseph Plateau. Myth and reality]. Tijdschrift voor Geneeskunde (in Dutch). 58 (13): 915–920. doi:10.2143/TVG.58.13.5001372. OCLC 4632548690.
Museum for the History of Sciences, Ghent (2001). "Ghent Scientists: Joseph Plateau". Retrieved 2 October 2011.
Van der Mensbrugghe, G. (1885), "Notice sur Joseph Antoine Ferdinand Plateau" [Notice on Joseph Antoine Ferdinand Plateau] (PDF), Annuaire (in French), LI, Brussels: Royal Academies for Science and the Arts of Belgium: 389–486, ISBN 9780429682223, JFM 17.0018.01, OCLC 40831097, archived from the original (PDF) on 12 December 2011 A commemorative paper of nearly 100 pages describing many aspects of his life and research, including a portrait of him and authored by his son in Law, Gustaaf Van der Mensbrugghe.

Verschaffelt, J.-E. (1946), "Notice sur Gustaaf Van der Mensbrugghe" [Notice on Joseph Antoine Ferdinand Plateau] (PDF), Annuaire (in Dutch), CXII, Brussels: Royal Academies for Science and the Arts of Belgium: 29–79, archived from the original (PDF) on 12 December 2011 A biographical paper on Joseph Plateau's son-in-law, collaborator and first biographer.

External links and further reading

Plateau-Rayleigh instability – a 3D-lattice kinetic Monte Carlo simulation
Thirion, J. (1913). "Joseph-Antoine Plateau" . In Herbermann, Charles (ed.). Catholic Encyclopedia. New York: Robert Appleton Company.

[mt-1] O'Connor, John J.; Robertson, Edmund F., "Joseph Antoine Ferdinand Plateau", MacTutor History of Mathematics Archive, University of St Andrews

[birthp-2] (Van der Mensbrugghe 1885, p. 389): in this reference, written by his son in Law, Ghent is written Gand, which is its French name.

[3] "Goethe's Theory of Colours". theoryofcolor.org. Archived from the original on 8 October 2021. Retrieved 19 May 2016. Note to Paragraph 23

[p390-4] (Van der Mensbrugghe 1885, p. 390)

[5] (Van der Mensbrugghe 1885, p. 390): this ample biographical paper is used in this section as the main reference.

[6] (Van der Mensbrugghe 1885, p. 391)

[7] Commonly referred as Fanny Clavareau: see the Museum for the History of Sciences (2001), web site section "Plateau's blindness".

[8] (Van der Mensbrugghe 1885, p. 400)

[9] (Verschaffelt 1946, p. 30)

[10] (De Laey 2002, pp. 915–920)

[11] "Joseph Antoine Ferdinand Plateau (1801–1883)". Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences. Retrieved 19 July 2015.

[p396-12] (Van der Mensbrugghe 1885, p. 396)

[13] Wautier, Kristel; et al. (2012). "The Life and Work of Joseph Plateau: Father of Film and Discoverer of Surface Tension". Physics in Perspective. 14 (3): 258. Bibcode:2012PhP....14..258W. doi:10.1007/s00016-012-0087-8. ISSN 1422-6944. OCLC 5659011683. S2CID 123139853.

[14] See the Museum for the History of Sciences (2001), web site section "Anorthoscope".

[15] See the Museum for the History of Sciences (2001), web site section "Phenakistiscope".

[16] Plateau, J. (1873). Statique expérimentale et théorique des liquides soumis aux seules forces moléculaires [Experimental and theoretical statics of liquids subject to only molecular forces] (in French). Paris, France: Gauthier-Villars. OCLC 809459725. vol. 1 and vol. 2.

[Joseph_Plateau's_Google_Doodle-17] "Joseph Antoine Ferdinand Plateau's 218th Birthday". Google. 14 October 2019. Retrieved 14 October 2019.

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PROFILPELAJAR.COM

Joseph Plateau

Biography

Academic career

Research

Optics

Plateau's problem

Works

In popular culture

See also

References

Biographical references

External links and further reading

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