Gay-Lussac, Joseph

Gay-Lussac, Joseph (-Louis)

(born Dec. 6, 1778, Saint-Léonard-de-Noblat, France—died May 9, 1850, Paris) French chemist and physicist. He showed that all gases expand by the same fraction of their volume for a given temperature increase; this led to the devising of a new temperature scale whose profound thermodynamic significance was later established by Lord Kelvin. Taking measurements from a balloon flying more than 20,000 ft (6,000 m) high, he concluded that Earth's magnetic intensity and atmospheric composition were constant to that altitude. With Alexander von Humboldt, he determined the proportions of hydrogen and oxygen in water. He is remembered as a pioneer investigator of the behaviour of gases and techniques of chemical analysis and a founder of meteorology.