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Works of Fourier. Edited by Jean Gaston Darboux. Vol. 2. Reprint of the 1890 original. (Œuvres de Fourier. Tome 2.) (French) Zbl 1271.01049

Publisher’s description: Following the French Revolution, the physicist and mathematician Jean Baptiste Joseph Fourier (1768–1830) taught at the École Normale Supérieure and later succeeded Lagrange at the École Polytechnique. He was promoted to administrative positions under Napoleon, but continued to pursue his scientific interests. From 1822 until his death he served as the permanent secretary for mathematical sciences at the Académie des Sciences. Thanks to his substantial contributions to the field, Fourier’s name has passed as an adjective into the mathematical vocabulary of every major language. These selected works were edited by the mathematician Jean Gaston Darboux (1842–1917) and published in two volumes between 1888 and 1890.
Volume 2 contains several extraordinary contributions: the first paper to address the question of why the earth’s surface is warm (which we now call the greenhouse effect), the first paper to address the cooling of the Earth’s interior (still a major research topic) and the first paper on optimisation under linear constraints, along with the results on roots of polynomials which first made Fourier’s reputation.
See the review of the 1890 original in [JFM 22.0021.01]. For Volume 1 see [JFM 20.0012.05; Zbl 1271.01048].

MSC:

01A75 Collected or selected works; reprintings or translations of classics
01-06 Proceedings, conferences, collections, etc. pertaining to history and biography
01A50 History of mathematics in the 18th century
01A55 History of mathematics in the 19th century
86-03 History of geophysics
90-03 History of operations research and mathematical programming
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