In 1798, Fourier joined Napoleon's army in its invasion of Egypt as scientific adviser. While in Cairo Fourier helped found the Cairo Institute and was one of the twelve members of the mathematics division. Napoleon abandoned his army and returned to Paris in 1799, he soon held absolute power in France. Fourier returned to France in 1801 and in 1887, elected to the Académie des Sciences Jean Baptiste Joseph Fourier (21 March 1768 – 16 May 1830) was a French mathematician and physicist born in Auxerre. He is best known for the Fourier series and its applications to intrinsic problems such as heat transfer and vibrations. In addition, Fourier is credited with the discovery of the greenhouse effect. At the age of nine, he was orphaned and later educated by the Benevenistes of the Covent of St. Mark. In 1787, Fourier decided to train for the priesthood and entered the Benedictine abbey of St Benoitsur-Loire. However, Fourier did not take his religious vows. .In 1790, he became a teacher at the Benedictine college, École Royale Militaire of Auxerre. In 1793, a third element was added to this life when he became involved in politics and joined the French Revolutionary Committee. In July 1794, he was arrested, the charges relating to the Orléans incident, and he was imprisoned. Later, due to political influences Fourier would be freed of all charges against him. Fourier accomplishments within the medical community have made a huge impact on Magnetic Resonance Imaging reconstruction techniques as well as image filtering to extract frequency within an images space and time. Basically, FT changes waveforms from a time domain, a series of data points measured in milliseconds, seconds, or even minutes in time on a "x axis", to frequency domain, a series of data frequency points measured in amplitude or hertz on a "y axis". (Fig 1) Mathematicians also use inverse Fourier transforms to change frequency domains back into time domains. Pretty kwoool huh? Afterwords, FT reconstructs the information into a clear image that the technicians and/or radiologists can read and understand (Fig 2). until his death. What is Fourier Transform (FT)?
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