I am sorry not to have known the mathematician who first made use of this method because I would have cited him. Regarding the researches of d'Alembe… - Joseph Fourier

The question of terrestrial temperature, one of the most remarkable and difficult in natural philosophy... I have... condensed in a single essay... the results of this theory. The analytical details... I have already published. I was specially desirous of presenting... a complete view of the phenomena and the mathematical relations... between them.

The interposition of the air very much modifies the effects of the heat upon the surface of the globe. The solar rays traversing the atmospheric strata, which are condensed by their own weight [at decreasing altitudes], heat them very unequally; those which are rarest are likewise coldest, because they... absorb a smaller part of the rays. The heat of the sun... in the form of light, possesses the property of penetrating transparent solids or liquids, and loses this property... when by... terrestrial bodies, it is turned into heat radiating without light.

We shall now consider that peculiar heat which our globe had at the time of the formation of the planets, and which continues to be dissipated at the surface under the influence of the low temperature of the planetary space.