Fourier, Jean Baptiste Joseph

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Fourier, Jean Baptiste Joseph (1768–1830) French mathematician and physicist, scientific adviser (1798–1801) to Napoleon in Egypt. Fourier's application of mathematics to the study of heat led him to discover a technique (Fourier analysis) of expressing complex periodic functions in terms of sums of sine and cosine waves. He also developed the Fourier series of sine and cosine functions, which can be used to represent many periodic phenomena.

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