Physicist and inventor — Jacques Alexandre César Charles (Beaugency, 1746 – Paris, 1823) was a French physicist, chemist and inventor, a member of the Academy of Sciences. Around 1787 he observed that, at constant pressure, the volume of a gas increases proportionally with temperature, a relationship now known as Charles’s law, one of the foundations of the study of ideal gases. Although he did not publish this result, it was later taken up and made known by Gay-Lussac. Charles was also a pioneer of aerostatics: in 1783 he designed and piloted one of the first hydrogen-filled balloons, competing with the Montgolfier brothers, who used hot air. His contributions link the physical study of gases to humankind’s earliest ventures into flight.
Trivia
On 1 December 1783 Charles made a spectacular hydrogen balloon ascent before an enormous crowd in Paris; having gone up again alone after landing, he rose to great altitude and probably became the first man to witness a second sunset on the same day.
Theories and contributions
- Charles’s law — At constant pressure, the volume of a gas is proportional to the absolute temperature: .
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1 linked atoms.