Fabry, Charles

Fabry, Charles 

Born June 11, 1867, in Marseille; died Dec. 11, 1945, in Paris. French physicist. Member of the Académic des Sciences (1927).

After graduating from the Ecole Polytechnique in Paris, Fabry taught at the Lycée Saint-Louis. He became a lecturer at the University of Marseille in 1894 and was later appointed a professor at the university. In 1921 he became a professor at the University of Paris and the director of the Institut d’Optique in Paris.

Fabry’s main works dealt with applications of spectroscopy to, for example, metrology and astrophysics. Together with A. Perot, Fabry designed the Fabry-Perot interferometer. He established the international system of wavelengths and defined the meter on the basis of the red line of cadmium. He discovered ozone in the upper layers of the atmosphere.

Fabry became a fellow of the Royal Society of London in 1931.

REFERENCE

De Brogue, M. “Charles Fabry, 1867–1945.” Obituary Notices of Fellows of the Royal Society, 1947, vol. 5, no. 15, pp. 445–50.