Jean Baptiste Joseph Fourier, baron, a French savant, born in Auxerre, March 21, 1768, died in Paris, May 16, 1830. He was professor of mathematics at Auxerre, afterward a teacher in the polytechnic school at Paris, and in 1798 a member of the scientific commission in Egypt. In 1802 he was appointed prefect of the department of Isere, and in 1808 made a baron. By the draining of the marshes of Bourgoin he freed more than 40 communes from the pestilential malaria to which they had always been subject. On the return of Napo-leon from Elba, he issued a proclamation in favor of Louis XVIII, and was removed by the emperor, who however appointed him prefect of the department of the Rhone. In 1817 he became a member of the academy of sciences, and soon afterward perpetual secretary jointly with Cuvier, and in 1827 member of the French academy. Upon the death of Laplace in 1827 he became president of the conseil de perfectionnement in the polytechnic school. His principal works are Theorie ana-lytique de la chaleur (1822), and Analyse des equations determinees (1831), a posthumous publication, but written in his youth.