Background
Jean Charles Athanase Peltier was born at Ham, France on the 22nd of February 1785.
Jean Charles Athanase Peltier was born at Ham, France on the 22nd of February 1785.
His formal education was limited to the local schools. Peltier initially trained as a watchmaker.
He was originally a watchmaker, but retired from business about the age of thirty and devoted himself to experimental and observational science.
Peltier's papers, which are numerous, are devoted in great part to atmospheric electricity, waterspouts, cyanometry and polarization of sky-light, the temperature of water in the spheroidal state, and the boiling-point at great elevations. There are also a few devoted to curious points of natural history. But his name will always be associated with the thermal effects at junctions in a voltaic circuit.
Peltier discovered the calorific effect of electric current passing through the junction of two different metals. This is now called the Peltier effect (or Peltier–Seebeck effect). By switching the direction of current, either heating or cooling may be achieved. Junctions always come in pairs, as the two different metals are joined at two points. Thus heat will be moved from one junction to the other.
He introduced the Peltier effect. Peltier also introduced the concept of electrostatic induction (1840), based on the modification of the distribution of electric charge in a material under the influence of a second object closest to it and its own electrical charge. This effect has been very important in the recent development of non-polluting cooling mechanisms.
