Peltier (1785-1845) was a French physicist now remembered as the man who completed a discovery made by T. J. Seebeck. This discovery, made in 1834, revealed that an electric current produces either heating or cooling at the junction place of two different metals. The direction in which the current is traveling determines whether cooling or heating is produced.
In 1961, production of small-sized electric refrigerators using the cooling effect discovered by Peltier was announced. A clockmaker by trade, Peltier was born at Ham, France, on February 25, 1785. He died in Paris on October 27, 1845.
