Joseph Antoine Ferdinand Plateau (14 October 1801 – 15 September 1883) was a
Belgian
Belgian may refer to:
* Something of, or related to, Belgium
* Belgians, people from Belgium or of Belgian descent
* Languages of Belgium, languages spoken in Belgium, such as Dutch, French, and German
*Ancient Belgian language, an extinct languag ...
physicist and mathematician. He was one of the first people to demonstrate the illusion of a moving image. 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
The phenakistiscope (also known by the spellings phénakisticope or phenakistoscope) was the first widespread animation device that created a fluent illusion of motion. Dubbed and ('stroboscopic discs') by its inventors, it has been known und ...
.
Biography
Plateau was born in
Brussels
Brussels (french: Bruxelles or ; nl, Brussel ), officially the Brussels-Capital Region (All text and all but one graphic show the English name as Brussels-Capital Region.) (french: link=no, Région de Bruxelles-Capitale; nl, link=no, Bruss ...
.
His father,
Antoine Plateau (
fr) born in
Tournai, was a talented flower painter. 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
Physics is the natural science that studies matter, its fundamental constituents, its motion and behavior through space and time, and the related entities of energy and force. "Physical science is that department of knowledge which r ...
; enchanted by the experiments he observed, he vowed to discover their secrets someday.
Plateau spent his school holidays in
Marche-les-Dames
Marche-les-Dames (; wa, Måtche-les-Dames) is a village of Wallonia and a district of the city of Namur, located in the province of Namur, Belgium.
It is located on the bank of the Meuse river. Because of the high cliffs this place is popular w ...
, 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.
At the age of fourteen, he lost his father and mother; the trauma caused by this loss made him fall ill.
On 27 August 1840, Plateau married Augustine–Thérèse–Aimée–Fanny Clavareau, and they had a son a year later. His daughter Alice Plateau married in 1871, who became his collaborator and later his first
biographer
Biographers are authors who write an account of another person's life, while autobiographers are authors who write their own biography.
Biographers
Countries of working life: Ab=Arabia, AG=Ancient Greece, Al=Australia, Am=Armenian, AR=Ancient Rome ...
.
Fascinated by the persistence of luminous impressions on the
retina
The retina (from la, rete "net") is the innermost, light-sensitive layer of tissue of the eye of most vertebrates and some molluscs. The optics of the eye create a focused two-dimensional image of the visual world on the retina, which then ...
, Plateau performed an experiment in which he gazed directly into the
Sun
The Sun is the star at the center of the Solar System. It is a nearly perfect ball of hot plasma, heated to incandescence by nuclear fusion reactions in its core. The Sun radiates this energy mainly as light, ultraviolet, and infrared radi ...
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 suffered from chronic
uveitis
Uveitis () is inflammation of the uvea, the pigmented layer of the eye between the inner retina and the outer fibrous layer composed of the sclera and cornea. The uvea consists of the middle layer of pigmented vascular structures of the eye and in ...
.
Plateau became a foreign member of the
Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1872.
Plateau died in
Ghent
Ghent ( nl, Gent ; french: Gand ; traditional English: Gaunt) is a city and a municipality in the Flemish Region of Belgium. It is the capital and largest city of the East Flanders province, and the third largest in the country, exceeded i ...
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.
In 1827, Plateau became a teacher of mathematics at the "
Atheneum" school in Brussels.
In 1835, he was appointed Professor of Physics and Applied Physics at the
State University in Ghent.
Research
Optics
In 1829, Plateau submitted his doctoral thesis to his mentor
Adolphe Quetelet
Lambert Adolphe Jacques Quetelet FRSF or FRSE (; 22 February 1796 – 17 February 1874) was a Belgian astronomer, mathematician, statistician and sociologist who founded and directed the Brussels Observatory and was influential in intro ...
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
The retina (from la, rete "net") is the innermost, light-sensitive layer of tissue of the eye of most vertebrates and some molluscs. The optics of the eye create a focused two-dimensional image of the visual world on the retina, which then ...
(duration, intensity, and colour), his mathematical research into the intersections of revolving curves (
locus
Locus (plural loci) is Latin for "place". It may refer to:
Entertainment
* Locus (comics), a Marvel Comics mutant villainess, a member of the Mutant Liberation Front
* ''Locus'' (magazine), science fiction and fantasy magazine
** ''Locus Award' ...
), the observation of the distortion of moving images, and the reconstruction of distorted images through counter revolving discs (he dubbed these
anorthoscopic discs).
In 1832, Plateau invented an early
stroboscopic device, the "
phenakistiscope
The phenakistiscope (also known by the spellings phénakisticope or phenakistoscope) was the first widespread animation device that created a fluent illusion of motion. Dubbed and ('stroboscopic discs') by its inventors, it has been known und ...
", 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
Cinema may refer to:
Film
* Cinematography, the art of motion-picture photography
* Film or movie, a series of still images that create the illusion of a moving image
** Film industry, the technological and commercial institutions of filmmaking
...
.
Plateau's problem
Plateau also studied the phenomena of
capillary action
Capillary action (sometimes called capillarity, capillary motion, capillary rise, capillary effect, or wicking) is the process of a liquid flowing in a narrow space without the assistance of, or even in opposition to, any external forces li ...
and
surface tension.
[vol. 1]
an
vol. 2
The mathematical problem of existence of a
minimal surface
In mathematics, a minimal surface is a surface that locally minimizes its area. This is equivalent to having zero mean curvature (see definitions below).
The term "minimal surface" is used because these surfaces originally arose as surfaces tha ...
with a given boundary is named after him. He conducted extensive studies of
soap film
Soap films are thin layers of liquid (usually water-based) surrounded by air. For example, if two soap bubbles come into contact, they merge and a thin film is created in between. Thus, foams are composed of a network of films connected by Platea ...
s and formulated
Plateau's laws
Plateau's laws describe the structure of soap films. These laws were formulated in the 19th century by the Belgian physicist Joseph Plateau from his experimental observations. Many patterns in nature are based on foams obeying these laws.
Laws ...
, which describe the structures formed by such films in foams.
Works
*
**
In popular culture
On 14 October 2019, the search engine
Google
Google LLC () is an American Multinational corporation, multinational technology company focusing on Search Engine, search engine technology, online advertising, cloud computing, software, computer software, quantum computing, e-commerce, ar ...
commemorated Plateau with a
Doodle
A doodle is a drawing made while a person's attention is otherwise occupied. Doodles are simple drawings that can have concrete representational meaning or may just be composed of random and abstract lines or shapes, generally without ever lift ...
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.
See also
*
Patterns in nature
Patterns in nature are visible regularities of form found in the natural world. These patterns recur in different contexts and can sometimes be modelled mathematically. Natural patterns include symmetries, trees, spirals, meanders, waves, ...
*
Plateau's laws
Plateau's laws describe the structure of soap films. These laws were formulated in the 19th century by the Belgian physicist Joseph Plateau from his experimental observations. Many patterns in nature are based on foams obeying these laws.
Laws ...
*
Plateau's problem
In mathematics, Plateau's problem is to show the existence of a minimal surface with a given boundary, a problem raised by Joseph-Louis Lagrange in 1760. However, it is named after Joseph Plateau who experimented with soap films. The problem ...
*
Plateau–Rayleigh instability
The Plateau–Rayleigh instability, often just called the Rayleigh instability, explains why and how a falling stream of fluid breaks up into smaller packets with the same volume but less surface area. It is related to the Rayleigh–Taylor insta ...
*
Soap bubble
*
Stretched grid method
References
Biographical references
*
*
* 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
In law and in cultural anthropology, affinity is the kinship relationship created or that exists between two people as a result of someone's marriage. It is the relationship which each party to a marriage has to the relations of the other part ...
, Gustaaf Van der Mensbrugghe.
* A biographical paper on Joseph Plateau's
son-in-law
Son-in-Law (22 April 1911 – 15 May 1941) was a British Thoroughbred racehorse and an influential sire, especially for sport horses.
The National Horseracing Museum says Son-in-Law is "probably the best and most distinguished stayer this co ...
, collaborator and first
biographer
Biographers are authors who write an account of another person's life, while autobiographers are authors who write their own biography.
Biographers
Countries of working life: Ab=Arabia, AG=Ancient Greece, Al=Australia, Am=Armenian, AR=Ancient Rome ...
.
External links and further reading
Plateau-Rayleigh instability – a 3D-lattice kinetic Monte Carlo simulation*
{{DEFAULTSORT:Plateau, Joseph
1801 births
1883 deaths
Belgian physicists
Blind academics
Blind people from Belgium
Flemish scientists
Fluid dynamicists
Ghent University faculty
Members of the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences
Foreign Members of the Royal Society
Scientists from Brussels
University of Liège alumni
Scientists with disabilities