Here, you will uncover historical information about the society. Enjoy these nuggets curated by John Challis, our Archives Officer.
This year marks the bicentenary of an important paper presented to the Académie Royale de Sciences by Jean Baptiste Fourier (1768-1830). Fourier was a French mathematician and physicist perhaps best known for his development of the eponymous Fourier series. In addition to his contributions in mathematics and physics he was an Egyptologist who accompanied Napoleon on his expedition to Egypt, a prefect of Isère and Rhône, and due to his support of Napoleon twice a political prisoner. His work on Fourier series, or trigonometric series, designed to represent functions was first presented in 1808 (Fourier, 1808). It was initially met with resistance from such luminaries as Joseph-Louis Lagrange, Pierre-Simon Laplace, and Adrien-Marie Legendre. So, what was the topic of his 1824 presentation? It was actually an early conceptualization of the greenhouse effect, the idea that the Earth's atmosphere might act as an insulator (see, for example Fourier, 1837).
Of course, in biomechanics the analysis of signals using Fourier series is an important tool. Lord Kelvin (1824-1907) claimed,
“Fourier's theorem is not only one of the most beautiful results of modern analysis, but it may be said to furnish an indispensable instrument in the treatment of nearly every recondite question in modern physics.”
R. McNeill Alexander (1934-2016) was a zoologist who exploited this “indispensable instrument”. He made many important contributions to our understanding of legged locomotion (and early in his career the motion of fish). For his various contributions he was awarded the Muybridge Medal in 1991. The Muybridge Medal is the most prestigious award of the ISB. At the XIIIth ISB Congress in Perth, Australia Professor Alexander gave the award lecture expounding on how the structure of the legs of animals influences how they move. This work was subsequently published as a review paper (Alexander, 1993). Some of the work he reviewed included that of Alexander & Jayes (1978) who modelled the ground reaction force arising in locomotion as truncated Fourier series, a method which is described in more detail in Alexander & Jayes (1980). Jayes & Alexander (1980) exploited this method to explain the low-speed locomotion of the four-legged gait of Chelonians (turtles, terrapins, and tortoises). It is hard to imagine that Fourier, who used his series to examine the heating of metals, could have foreseen such applications of Fourier series, or indeed the impact of the greenhouse effect.
References
- Alexander, R. M. (1993). Optimization of structure and movement of the legs of animals. Journal of Biomechanics, 26(Supplement 1), 1-6.
- Alexander, R. M., & Jayes, A. S. (1978). Vertical movements in walking and running. Journal of Zoology, 185(1), 27-40.
- Alexander, R. M., & Jayes, A. S. (1980). Fourier analysis of forces exerted in walking and running. Journal of Biomechanics, 13(4), 383-390.
- Fourier, J. (1808). Mémoire sur la propagation de la chaleur dans les corps solides. Nouveau Bulletin des Sciences de la Société Philomathique de Paris, 6, 112-116.
- Fourier, J.-B. J. (1837). General remarks on the temperature of the terrestrial globe and the planetary spaces. American Journal of Science, 32(1), 1-20.
- Jayes, A., & Alexander, R. M. (1980). The gaits of chelonians: walking techniques for very low speeds. Journal of Zoology, 191(3), 353-378.
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