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PLATEAU, JOSEPH ANTOINE FERDINAND (18...

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Originally appearing in Volume V21, Page 804 of the 1911 Encyclopedia Britannica.
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PLATEAU, See also:JOSEPH See also:ANTOINE See also:FERDINAND (1801-1883) , Belgian physicist, was See also:born at See also:Brussels on the 14th of See also:October 18o1, and died on the 15th of See also:September 1883 at See also:Ghent, where he had been See also:professor of physics from 1835. He was a See also:pupil and friend of L. A. J. See also:Quetelet, who had much See also:influence on the See also:early See also:part of his career. The more See also:original investigations of Plateau refer chiefly to portions of one or other of two branches of See also:science—physiological See also:optics and molecular forces. We owe to him the " stroboscopic " method of studying the See also:motion of a vibrating See also:body, by looking at it through equidistant radial slits in a revolving disk. In 1829 he imprudently gazed at the midday See also:sun for 20 seconds, with the view of studying the after effects. The result was See also:blindness for some days, succeeded by a temporary recovery; but for the next fourteen years his sight gradually deteriorated, and in 1843 he became permanently See also:blind. This calamity did not interrupt his scientific activity. Aided by his wife and son, and afterwards by his son-in-See also:law G. L. See also:van der Mensbrugghe, he continued to the end of his See also:life his researches on See also:vision—directing the course of the experiments which they made for him, and interpreting the bearing of the results.

He also published a valuable See also:

analytical See also:catalogue of all the more important See also:memoirs which had been written, from the earliest times to the end of the 18th See also:century, on his favourite theme of subjective visual phenomena. But even more extra-See also:ordinary were this blind See also:man's investigations about molecular forces, embracing hundreds of novel experiments whose results he saw only with others' eyes. These See also:form the subject of his See also:great See also:work Statique experimentale et theorique See also:des liquides soumis aux seules forces moleculaires (2 vols., 1873), a valuable contribution to our knowledge of capillary phenomena. His son, See also:Felix Auguste Joseph Plateau (b. 1841), became professor of See also:zoology and See also:comparative See also:anatomy at Ghent in 187o.

End of Article: PLATEAU, JOSEPH ANTOINE FERDINAND (1801-1883)

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