Guillaume Amontons

Guillaume Amontons ( born August 31, 1663 Paris, † October 11, 1705 ) was a French physicist and governor of Lille. He is known for his work on friction and temperature measurement.

Life

Guillaume Amontons was born in 1663. His father was a lawyer from Normandy, who had settled in Paris. From a young age he was profoundly deaf. He saw himself, however, not greatly affected, but regarded it as an advantage that allowed him to focus more on his scientific work. Although he had no university education, he focused on mathematics, science and astronomy. He also drew and worked on cartography and architecture.

He discovered the valid in ideal gases proportionality of pressure and temperature at constant volume, the law of Amontons (ideal gas law ) and improved the construction of thermometers, hygrometers and barometers. Amontons postulated the existence of absolute zero on the basis of the decrease in the gas volume with decreasing temperature. However, the later-developed concept of absolute zero is based on energy and can not be inferred on the basis of the volume.

Falsely often the formulation of laws known as Amontonssche laws of friction, he is credited, he is said to have discovered in 1699. His work, however, included only static friction, ie the friction of resting bodies. It is based in large part on the back that he discovered work of Leonardo da Vinci (1452-1519), who introduced the first modern concept of friction.

In 1688 Guillaume Amontons invented an optical telegraph, which was to help deaf people, and presented it to the king. The telegraph consisted of a wind turbine, whose wings were each described with a letter. An observer at a distant windmill watched the sequence of the letters with a telescope and was able to pass on the message. In 1695, he then built an optical telegraph line from Meudon to Paris.

The lunar crater Amontons was named after him.