Charles Fabry
French physicist
Marie Paul Auguste Charles Fabry (French: [maʁi pɔl oɡyst ʃaʁl fabʁi]; 11 June 1867 – 11 December 1945) was a French physicist working on optics. Together with Alfred Pérot he invented the Fabry–Pérot interferometer. He is also one of the co-discoverers of the ozone layer.
Biography
Family background
The Fabry family originates from Bourg-Saint-Andéol in the Ardèche department. It was in this town that François-Antoine Fabry (1749–1823), a spinner in Bourg-Saint-Andéol and Charles’s great-grandfather, prepared for the entrance exam to the École Polytechnique at the end of the 18th century. He was admitted and became the first in a long line of polytechnicians. His son Auguste (1796–1877) was also admitted and received lessons from the famous physicist André-Marie Ampère.
Auguste’s son, also named Charles, married Marie Estrangin, from a prominent Marseille family close to the playwright Edmond Rostand. Together, they had five children: Auguste, Eugène Fabry, Louis Fabry, Charles, and Pierre, several of whom had distinguished careers. Eugène, born in 1856, was a polytechnician and Doctor of Mathematical Sciences, a tobacco engineer, an associate professor at the lycées of Tarbes, Carcassonne, and Tours, a lecturer at the Faculties of Sciences in Rennes and Nancy, a professor in Montpellier and Marseille, and an examiner at the École Polytechnique.
“Charles Fabry” enters the record as french physicist. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Charles, Fabry and French can confirm, complicate or overturn.
Why this record matters
“Charles Fabry” is worth following because a concise public description often conceals a longer documentary argument. Here, Charles, Fabry and French provides the most credible route into that argument.
The citation trail is more important than the brevity of the summary: it shows where individual claims can be examined in context. The source revision retrieved here is dated Feb 10, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q319289. VIAF identifies the subject as 62328086. The Library of Congress control number is n87107844. 4 of 4 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1867, 1945, 1749 and 1823.
Overview language is designed for orientation and should not be treated as a substitute for the evidence cited beneath it. The lead is largely declarative, so disagreement and counter-evidence require a deliberate search beyond the opening account. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.
How to read it
Use the entry as an orientation point, then follow its citations and revision history. Names, dates and institutional relationships should be checked against the original record.
- Subject orientation
- Search vocabulary
- Locating named sources
The closest primary source, responsible institution and strongest cited specialist reference.
Three-step research path
- Establish the record: confirm the title “Charles Fabry”, its source revision and the description used here.
- Expand the search: follow Charles Fabry primary sources, Charles Fabry archive and Charles research across catalogues and specialist indexes.
- Test the account: compare the strongest cited source with the responsible institution’s current record and note any disagreement.
Questions for further research
- Which source most directly establishes the central claim about “Charles Fabry”?
- Which institution is responsible for the underlying evidence?
- What terminology or title could unlock a more precise catalogue search?
Search terms from this dossier
This entry incorporates text from “Charles Fabry” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.