Charles Fabry

Charles Fabry.

Maurice Paul Auguste Charles Fabry FMRS^[1] (11 June 1867, Marseille – 11 December 1945, Paris) was a French physicist.^[2]

Life

Fabry graduated from the Ecole Polytechnique in Paris and received his doctorate from the University of Paris in 1892, for his work on interference fringes, which established him as an authority in the field of optics and spectroscopy. In 1904, he was appointed Professor of Physics at the University of Marseille, where he spent 26 years.

Career

He and Henri Buisson discovered the ozone layer in 1913. In optics, he discovered an explanation for the phenomenon of interference fringes. Together with his colleague Alfred Pérot he invented the Fabry–Pérot interferometer.^[3]

In 1921, Fabry was appointed Professor of General Physics at the Sorbonne and the first director of the new Institute of Optics. In 1926 he also became professor at the Ecole Polytechnique. He was the first general director of the Institut d'optique théorique et appliquée and director of "grande école" École supérieure d'optique (SupOptique).

During his career Fabry published 197 scientific papers, 14 books, and over 100 popular articles. For his important scientific achievements he received the Rumford Medal from the Royal Society of London in 1918. In the United States his work was recognized by the Henry Draper Medal from the National Academy of Sciences (1919)^[4] and the Franklin Medal from the Franklin Institute (1921). In 1927 he was elected to the French Academy of Sciences.

References

1. ^ http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v157/n3986/abs/157362a0.html
2. ^ http://adsabs.harvard.edu/full/1946MNRAS.106...42.
3. ^ J. M. Vaughan (1989). The Fabry-Perot interferometer: history, theory, practice, and applications. CRC Press. ISBN 9780852741382. http://books.google.com/books?id=mMLuISueDKYC&pg=PR6&lpg=PR6&dq=Marie+Paul+Auguste+Charles+Fabry&source=bl&ots=zY0BQannF8&sig=8VIX2OGnewmjXb_Ut9J-9uVWErc&hl=en&ei=yVKYTubrAsrf0QHA3tzECw&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=3&ved=0CDQQ6AEwAjgK#v=onepage&q=Marie%20Paul%20Auguste%20Charles%20Fabry&f=false. 
4. ^ "Henry Draper Medal". National Academy of Sciences. http://www.nasonline.org/site/PageServer?pagename=AWARDS_draper. Retrieved 19 February 2011. 

External links

• Joseph F. Mulligan, "Who were Fabry and Perot?", Am. J. Phys. 66, 797 (1998)
• Biography, in French

Persondata
Name	Fabry, Charles
Alternative names
Short description
Date of birth	11 June 1867
Place of birth
Date of death	11 December 1945
Place of death