James W. Brault (February 10, 1932 – November 1, 2008) was a 20th-century

scientist A scientist is a person who conducts scientific research to advance knowledge in an area of the natural sciences. In classical antiquity, there was no real ancient analog of a modern scientist. Instead, philosophers engaged in the philosoph ...

and a pioneer of Fourier transform spectroscopy. He was a world-leading expert in physical instrument design, numerical methods as applied to spectroscopy, and in atomic and molecular spectroscopy. He graduated from

Princeton University Princeton University is a private research university in Princeton, New Jersey. Founded in 1746 in Elizabeth as the College of New Jersey, Princeton is the fourth-oldest institution of higher education in the United States and one of the ...

in 1962 as a student of Robert H. Dicke on the

gravitational redshift In physics and general relativity, gravitational redshift (known as Einstein shift in older literature) is the phenomenon that electromagnetic waves or photons travelling out of a gravitational well (seem to) lose energy. This loss of energy ...

of the sun and worked later at the

Kitt Peak National Observatory The Kitt Peak National Observatory (KPNO) is a United States astronomical observatory located on Kitt Peak of the Quinlan Mountains in the Arizona-Sonoran Desert on the Tohono Oʼodham Nation, west-southwest of Tucson, Arizona. With more than ...

, where he installed a high-resolution

Fourier transform spectrometer Fourier-transform spectroscopy is a measurement technique whereby spectra are collected based on measurements of the coherence of a radiative source, using time-domain or space-domain measurements of the radiation, electromagnetic or not. It can ...

used for astronomy, solar physics, and laboratory spectroscopy. In his early years, Brault was involved in the development of the

lock-in amplifier A lock-in amplifier is a type of amplifier that can extract a signal with a known carrier wave from an extremely noisy environment. Depending on the dynamic reserve of the instrument, signals up to a million times smaller than noise components, p ...

, and of differential interference microscopy and phase modulation microscopy with Robert D. Allen.

References

* Sumner P. Davis, Mark C. Abrams, and James W. Brault, ''Fourier Transform Spectrometry'', Academic Press, 2001. * Ginette Roland, James W. Brault, and Larry Testerman, ''Photometric Atlas of the Solar Spectrum from 1,850 to 10,000 cm⁻¹'', 164 pp., Kitt Peak National Observatory, 1981. * James W. Brault, "Frequency Responsive Networks", U.S. Patent US3296464, 1967. * James W. Brault, "Gravitational redshift of solar lines", ''Bull. Am. Astron. Soc.'' 8, 28, 1963. * Photograph during solar eclipse in 1965: http://www.noao.edu/image_gallery/html/im0323.html Spectroscopists Princeton University alumni Place of birth missing Place of death missing 1932 births 2008 deaths {{US-scientist-stub