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Joseph Antoine Ferdinand Plateau (14 October 1801 – 15 September 1883) was a Belgian physicist and mathematician. He was one of the first people to demonstrate the illusion of a moving image. To do this, he used counterrotating disks with repeating drawn images in small increments of motion on one and regularly spaced slits in the other. He called this device of 1832 the
phenakistiscope The phenakistiscope (also known by the spellings phénakisticope or phenakistoscope) was the first widespread animation device that created a fluent illusion of motion. Dubbed and ('stroboscopic discs') by its inventors, it has been known und ...
.


Biography

Plateau was born in
Brussels Brussels (french: Bruxelles or ; nl, Brussel ), officially the Brussels-Capital Region (All text and all but one graphic show the English name as Brussels-Capital Region.) (french: link=no, Région de Bruxelles-Capitale; nl, link=no, Bruss ...
. His father, Antoine Plateau ( fr) born in Tournai, was a talented flower painter. At the age of six, the younger Plateau already could read, making him a
child prodigy A child prodigy is defined in psychology research literature as a person under the age of ten who produces meaningful output in some domain at the level of an adult expert. The term is also applied more broadly to young people who are extraor ...
in those times. While attending primary school, he was particularly impressed by a lesson of
physics Physics is the natural science that studies matter, its fundamental constituents, its motion and behavior through space and time, and the related entities of energy and force. "Physical science is that department of knowledge which ...
; enchanted by the experiments he observed, he vowed to discover their secrets someday. Plateau spent his school holidays in Marche-les-Dames, with his uncle and his family; his cousin and playfellow was Auguste Payen, who later became an architect and the principal designer of the Belgian railways. At the age of fourteen, he lost his father and mother; the trauma caused by this loss made him fall ill. On 27 August 1840, Plateau married Augustine–Thérèse–Aimée–Fanny Clavareau, and they had a son a year later. His daughter Alice Plateau married in 1871, who became his collaborator and later his first biographer. Fascinated by the persistence of luminous impressions on the
retina The retina (from la, rete "net") is the innermost, light-sensitive layer of tissue of the eye of most vertebrates and some molluscs. The optics of the eye create a focused two-dimensional image of the visual world on the retina, which the ...
, Plateau performed an experiment in which he gazed directly into the Sun for 25 seconds. He lost his eyesight later in his life and attributed the loss to this experiment. However, this may not have been the case, and he may have instead suffered from chronic uveitis. Plateau became a foreign member of the
Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences The Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences ( nl, Koninklijke Nederlandse Akademie van Wetenschappen, abbreviated: KNAW) is an organization dedicated to the advancement of science and literature in the Netherlands. The academy is housed ...
in 1872. Plateau died in
Ghent Ghent ( nl, Gent ; french: Gand ; traditional English: Gaunt) is a city and a municipality in the Flemish Region of Belgium. It is the capital and largest city of the East Flanders province, and the third largest in the country, exceeded i ...
in 1883.


Academic career

Plateau studied at the State University of Liège, where he graduated as a doctor of physical and mathematical sciences in 1829. In 1827, Plateau became a teacher of mathematics at the " Atheneum" school in Brussels. In 1835, he was appointed Professor of Physics and Applied Physics at the State University in Ghent.


Research


Optics

In 1829, Plateau submitted his doctoral thesis to his mentor
Adolphe Quetelet Lambert Adolphe Jacques Quetelet FRSF or FRSE (; 22 February 1796 – 17 February 1874) was a Belgian astronomer, mathematician, statistician and sociologist who founded and directed the Brussels Observatory and was influential in intro ...
for advice. It contained only 27 pages but formulated a great number of fundamental conclusions. It contained the first results of his research into the effect of colours on the
retina The retina (from la, rete "net") is the innermost, light-sensitive layer of tissue of the eye of most vertebrates and some molluscs. The optics of the eye create a focused two-dimensional image of the visual world on the retina, which the ...
(duration, intensity, and colour), his mathematical research into the intersections of revolving curves ( locus), the observation of the distortion of moving images, and the reconstruction of distorted images through counter revolving discs (he dubbed these anorthoscopic discs). In 1832, Plateau invented an early stroboscopic device, the "
phenakistiscope The phenakistiscope (also known by the spellings phénakisticope or phenakistoscope) was the first widespread animation device that created a fluent illusion of motion. Dubbed and ('stroboscopic discs') by its inventors, it has been known und ...
", the first device to give the illusion of a moving image. It consisted of two disks, one with small equidistant radial windows, through which the viewer could look, and another containing a sequence of images. When the two disks rotated at the correct speed, the synchronization of the windows and the images created an animated effect. The projection of stroboscopic photographs, creating the illusion of motion, eventually led to the development of cinema.


Plateau's problem

Plateau also studied the phenomena of capillary action and
surface tension Surface tension is the tendency of liquid surfaces at rest to shrink into the minimum surface area possible. Surface tension is what allows objects with a higher density than water such as razor blades and insects (e.g. water striders) t ...
.vol. 1
an
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The mathematical problem of existence of a minimal surface with a given boundary is named after him. He conducted extensive studies of soap films and formulated
Plateau's laws Plateau's laws describe the structure of soap films. These laws were formulated in the 19th century by the Belgian physicist Joseph Plateau from his experimental observations. Many patterns in nature are based on foams obeying these laws. Laws ...
, which describe the structures formed by such films in foams.


Works

* **


In popular culture

On 14 October 2019, the search engine
Google Google LLC () is an American Multinational corporation, multinational technology company focusing on Search Engine, search engine technology, online advertising, cloud computing, software, computer software, quantum computing, e-commerce, ar ...
commemorated Plateau with a Doodle on his 218th birth anniversary. This doodle was created by animator, filmmaker, and Doodler Olivia Huynh with inspiration and help from Diana Tran and Tom Tabanao. It is the first Google Doodle with different artwork showing up across different device displays—desktop, mobile, and the Google App.


See also

* Patterns in nature *
Plateau's laws Plateau's laws describe the structure of soap films. These laws were formulated in the 19th century by the Belgian physicist Joseph Plateau from his experimental observations. Many patterns in nature are based on foams obeying these laws. Laws ...
*
Plateau's problem In mathematics, Plateau's problem is to show the existence of a minimal surface with a given boundary, a problem raised by Joseph-Louis Lagrange in 1760. However, it is named after Joseph Plateau who experimented with soap films. The problem ...
* Plateau–Rayleigh instability *
Soap bubble A soap bubble is an extremely thin film of soap or detergent and water enclosing air that forms a hollow sphere with an iridescent surface. Soap bubbles usually last for only a few seconds before bursting, either on their own or on contact wi ...
*
Stretched grid method The stretched grid method (SGM) is a numerical technique for finding approximate solutions of various mathematical and engineering problems that can be related to an elastic grid behavior. In particular, meteorologists use the stretched grid meth ...


References


Biographical references

* * * A commemorative paper of nearly 100 pages describing many aspects of his life and research, including a portrait of him and authored by his son in Law, Gustaaf Van der Mensbrugghe. * A biographical paper on Joseph Plateau's
son-in-law Son-in-Law (22 April 1911 – 15 May 1941) was a British Thoroughbred racehorse and an influential sire, especially for sport horses. The National Horseracing Museum says Son-in-Law is "probably the best and most distinguished stayer this c ...
, collaborator and first biographer.


External links and further reading


Plateau-Rayleigh instability – a 3D-lattice kinetic Monte Carlo simulation
* {{DEFAULTSORT:Plateau, Joseph 1801 births 1883 deaths Belgian physicists Blind academics Blind people from Belgium Flemish scientists Fluid dynamicists Ghent University faculty Members of the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences Foreign Members of the Royal Society Scientists from Brussels University of Liège alumni Scientists with disabilities