FOURIER, JEAN BAPTISTE JOSEPH (1768-183o), French mathematician, was born at Auxerre on March 2I, 1768. Left an orphan at eight years old, he was educated at the military school of Auxerre, where he became a teacher of mathematics (1784) . He taught at the Ecole Norniale at Paris from its institu tion in 1795, and was later professor of analysis at the Ecole Poly technique. He accompanied Bonaparte to Egypt in 1798, and was made governor of Lower Egypt ; he organized munitions work shops when the English fleet cut off supplies. He contributed many papers on mathematics to the Institut du Caire, founded by Napoleon to strengthen French influence in the Levant. Re turning to France in 1801, he became, in 18o2, prefect of Isere, and in 1808 baron and chevalier of the Legion of Honour. At Grenoble he carried on elaborate investigations into the conduc tion of heat. He settled in Paris in and in 1822 he became joint secretary of the Academie des Sciences with Cuvier. In 1827 Fourier succeeded Laplace as president of the council of the Ecole Polytechnique. He died in Paris on May 16, 183o.
Fourier's Theorie Analytique de la Chaleur (1822, trans. A. Freeman, 187 2) marked an epoch in the history of mathematical physics (see below, FOURIER SERIES). Navier completed and pub lished his unfinished Analyse des equations determines (1831) . This work contained the development of an early paper of his on the resolution of numerical equations, and also "Fourier's theorem" on the real roots of an equation between two limits.
A list of Fourier's publications is given in the Catalogue of Scientific Papers of the Royal Society of London; a selection of his works was edited by Gaston Darboux, Oeuvres de Fourier (Paris, 1880-90) . See also Arago, "Joseph Fourier," in the Smithsonian Report (1871) .