Marcel Migeotte

Marcel Migeotte was born in Saint-Trond in 1912. He obtained a doctorate in physics and mathematics from the University of Liège in 1933, and a diploma in optical engineering from the Institut d'Optique de Paris the following year. At the same time, thanks to a CRB Fellow grant ( Commission for Relief Belgium), he specialized in the study of the infrared at the University of Michigan (USA).

He joined ULiège in 1935 as an assistant, where he developed an infrared spectroscopy laboratory. Associate of the FNRS from 1943 to 1949 (in 1946, he was unanimously proclaimed Agrégé de l'Enseignement Supérieur), he was Visiting Professor at Columbus University (Ohio, USA) from June 1947 to August 1948. It was during this stay that he discovered the presence of methane and carbon monoxide in the Earth's atmosphere, a discovery that earned him international renown.

Back in Liège, in 1950 he installed his first infrared spectroscope at the Jungfraujoch scientific station in Switzerland. The observations he made there enabled him, in 1956, to publish a Spectrometric Atlas of the Solar Spectrum, which strengthened his reputation and long remained a reference for infrared studies of the solar spectrum. The funds freed up by the International Geophysical Year of 1958 enabled him to build a new, more powerful spectroscope in Liège (but still with a view to installation at the Jungfraujoch), this time in the near infrared, which was to lead to the publication by his collaborators of a new, even more comprehensive atlas. Appointed lecturer in 1952 and full professor in 1956, he gave numerous courses to physicists and engineers in Liège until his emeritus in 1982. He was Dean of the Faculty of Science and, in 1975, member of the Class of Sciences of the Royal Academy of Belgium, and then Director in 1981.

Alongside his academic activities, he was also behind a program to observe the sun by stratospheric balloon from Texas, using a gondola developed at the Cointe observatory with the help of R. Zander.