Louis Marcel Brillouin (; 19 December 1854 – 16 June 1948) was a French

physicist A physicist is a scientist who specializes in the field of physics, which encompasses the interactions of matter and energy at all length and time scales in the physical universe. Physicists generally are interested in the root or ultimate cau ...

and

mathematician A mathematician is someone who uses an extensive knowledge of mathematics in their work, typically to solve mathematical problems. Mathematicians are concerned with numbers, data, quantity, structure, space, models, and change. History On ...

. Born in Saint-Martin-lès-Melle,

Deux-Sèvres Deux-Sèvres () is a French department. ''Deux-Sèvres'' literally means "two Sèvres": the Sèvre Nantaise and the Sèvre Niortaise are two rivers which have their sources in the department. It had a population of 374,878 in 2019.

France France (), officially the French Republic ( ), is a country primarily located in Western Europe. It also comprises of overseas regions and territories in the Americas and the Atlantic, Pacific and Indian Oceans. Its metropolitan area ...

, his father was a painter who moved to

Paris Paris () is the Capital city, capital and List of communes in France with over 20,000 inhabitants, most populous city of France, with an estimated population of 2,165,423 residents in 2019 in an area of more than 105 km² (41 sq mi), ma ...

when Marcel was a boy. There he attended the

Lycée Condorcet The Lycée Condorcet () is a school founded in 1803 in Paris, France, located at 8, rue du Havre, in the city's 9th arrondissement. It is one of the four oldest high schools in Paris and also one of the most prestigious. Since its inception, var ...

. The Brillouin family returned to Saint-Martin-lès-Melle during the Franco-Prussian War of 1870 to escape the fighting. There he spent time teaching himself from his grandfather's philosophy books. After the war, he returned to Paris and entered the

École Normale Supérieure École may refer to: * an elementary school in the French educational stages normally followed by secondary education establishments (collège and lycée) * École (river), a tributary of the Seine flowing in région Île-de-France * École, S ...

in 1874 and graduated in 1878. He became a physics assistant to Eleuthere Mascart (his future father-in-law) at the

Collège de France The Collège de France (), formerly known as the ''Collège Royal'' or as the ''Collège impérial'' founded in 1530 by François I, is a higher education and research establishment ('' grand établissement'') in France. It is located in Paris n ...

, while at the same time working for his doctorates in mathematics and physics, which he gained in 1880 and 1882, respectively. Brillouin then held successive posts as assistant professor of physics at universities in Nancy,

Dijon Dijon (, , ) (dated) * it, Digione * la, Diviō or * lmo, Digion is the prefecture of the Côte-d'Or department and of the Bourgogne-Franche-Comté region in northeastern France. the commune had a population of 156,920. The earlies ...

and

Toulouse Toulouse ( , ; oc, Tolosa ) is the prefecture of the French department of Haute-Garonne and of the larger region of Occitania. The city is on the banks of the River Garonne, from the Mediterranean Sea, from the Atlantic Ocean and from Pa ...

before returning to the École Normale Supérieure in Paris in 1888. Later, he was Professor of Mathematical Physics at the Collège de France from 1900 to retirement in 1931. In 1911 he was one of only six French physicists invited to the first

Solvay Conference The Solvay Conferences (french: Conseils Solvay) have been devoted to outstanding preeminent open problems in both physics and chemistry. They began with the historic invitation-only 1911 Solvay Conference on Physics, considered a turning point i ...

. He was awarded the Prix La Caze for 1912. Brillouin was elected to the

Académie des Sciences The French Academy of Sciences (French: ''Académie des sciences'') is a learned society, founded in 1666 by Louis XIV at the suggestion of Jean-Baptiste Colbert, to encourage and protect the spirit of French scientific research. It was at th ...

in 1921. He was an officer of the Legion of Honour. During his career he was the author of over 200 experimental and theoretic papers on a wide range of topics which include the kinetic theory of gases,

viscosity The viscosity of a fluid is a measure of its resistance to deformation at a given rate. For liquids, it corresponds to the informal concept of "thickness": for example, syrup has a higher viscosity than water. Viscosity quantifies the inte ...

thermodynamics Thermodynamics is a branch of physics that deals with heat, work, and temperature, and their relation to energy, entropy, and the physical properties of matter and radiation. The behavior of these quantities is governed by the four laws of th ...

electricity Electricity is the set of physical phenomena associated with the presence and motion of matter that has a property of electric charge. Electricity is related to magnetism, both being part of the phenomenon of electromagnetism, as describ ...

, and the physics of melting conditions. Most notably he: *built a new model of the Eötvös balance, *wrote on Helmholtz flow and the stability of aircraft, *worked on a theory of the tides. Brillouin died in Paris (16 June 1948). His son

Léon Brillouin Léon Nicolas Brillouin (; August 7, 1889 – October 4, 1969) was a French physicist. He made contributions to quantum mechanics, radio wave propagation in the atmosphere, solid state physics, and information theory. Early life Brillouin ...

, also had a prominent career in physics.

References

External links

Biography at the School of Mathematics and Statistics, University of St Andrews, Scotland
{{DEFAULTSORT:Brillouin, Marcel 1854 births 1948 deaths French physicists French mathematicians École Normale Supérieure alumni Collège de France faculty Lycée Condorcet alumni Officiers of the Légion d'honneur Members of the French Academy of Sciences

Further reading

References

External links