High achiever

摘要

Between 1900 and 1905 the theories of quantum mechanics, special relativity and radioactive transmutation were born, and the atomic theory of matter was confirmed. These events so dominate historical accounts of the period that other breakthroughs languish in obscurity, among them the discovery of the stratosphere in 1902 by the independent French scientist Leon Teisserenc de Bort (1855-1913) — one of the most overlooked events in the history of science. Teisserenc de Bort, working at his private estate at Trappes, near Paris, was a pioneering investigator of what were then the upper reaches of the atmosphere, up to altitudes of 14 km. He used balloons of his own design, delicate things made of kerosened paper and filled with hydrogen, trailing packets of recording instruments — also of his own design — which parachuted back to Earth.