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See also: born at Brussels on the 14th of See also: October 18o1, and died on the 15th of See also: September 1883 at See also: Ghent, where he had been professor of physics from 1835
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He was a pupil and friend of L
.
A
.
J
.
Quetelet, who had much influence on the early See also: part of his career
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The more See also: original investigations of See also: Plateau refer chiefly to portions of one or other of two branches of science—physiological See also: optics and molecular forces
.
We owe to him the " stroboscopic " method of studying the motion of a vibrating See also: body, by looking at it through equidistant radial slits in a revolving disk
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In 1829 he imprudently gazed at the midday See also: sun for 20 seconds, with the view of studying the after effects
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The result was See also: blindness for some days, succeeded by a temporary recovery; but for the next fourteen years his sight gradually deteriorated, and in 1843 he became permanently See also: blind
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This calamity did not interrupt his scientific activity
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Aided by his wife and son, and afterwards by his son-in-See also: law G
.
L. See also: van der Mensbrugghe, he continued to the end of his See also: life his researches on vision—directing the course of the experiments which they made for him, and interpreting the bearing of the results
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He also published a valuable See also: analytical See also: catalogue of all the more important See also: memoirs which had been written, from the earliest times to the end of the 18th century, on his favourite theme of subjective visual phenomena
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But even more extra-ordinary were this blind See also: man's investigations about molecular forces, embracing hundreds of novel experiments whose results he saw only with others' eyes
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These See also: form the subject of his See also: great See also: work Statique experimentale et theorique See also: des liquides soumis aux seules forces moleculaires (2 vols., 1873), a valuable contribution to our knowledge of capillary phenomena
.
His son, Felix Auguste See also: Joseph Plateau (b
.
1841), became professor of zoology and See also: comparative anatomy at Ghent in 187o
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