Joseph Fourier

Joseph Fourier was a French mathematician and administrator who studied heat as a class of phenomena outside ordinary mechanics. In the Analytical Theory of Heat he reduces conduction to differential equations and solves them by decomposing complex temperature distributions into simple periodic parts. Of the nature of heat he remains indifferent. The laws of its effects, he holds, can be known without settling the cause. The method became a tool across physics. His example forces a standing question: whether physical science may stop at mathematical description or must press on to mechanical explanation.