Louis Georges Gouy facts for kids

Louis Georges Gouy, a French physicist

Louis Georges Gouy (born February 19, 1854 – died January 27, 1926) was an important French physicist. He is famous for several scientific ideas and tools named after him. These include the Gouy balance, which measures magnetic properties, and the Gouy phase, a special effect in light beams.

Gouy was born in a town called Vals-les-Bains in France. He became a respected member of the French Academy of Sciences, first as a correspondent in 1901 and then as a full member in 1913.

What Louis Gouy Studied

Louis Gouy spent his career exploring many different areas of physics. His main work focused on understanding how light and electricity behave. Here are some of the key topics he investigated:

Light and Waves

• Light Speed: He studied how fast light travels through different materials. This is called the propagation velocity of light waves.
• Small Waves: Gouy also looked at how tiny, spherical waves spread out.
• Light Bending: He researched how light bends when it passes through objects, a process known as diffraction. He even studied bending at very wide angles.
• Gouy Phase Shift: A special effect in light beams, especially Gaussian beams, is named after him. It's called the Gouy phase shift.

Electricity and Magnetism

• Static Electricity: Gouy investigated electrostatics, which is about electric charges that are not moving. He looked at how materials store electrical energy.
• Surface Charge: He studied how electric charges gather on the surface of materials.
• Magnetic Fields: He explored how magnetic fields affect electrical discharges in gases.
• Electrocapillarity: This is about how electricity affects the surface tension of liquids.
• Magnetic Measurements: Gouy developed a special device, the Gouy balance, to measure how strongly materials react to a magnetic field.

Other Important Work

• Brownian Motion: Gouy also contributed to the study of Brownian motion. This is the random movement of particles in a fluid.
• Colored Flames: He researched how much light different colored flames give off.

Louis Georges Gouy (first row, right) at the Solvay conference in 1913, with other famous scientists.

See also

• Gouy-Stodola theorem