Dutch meteorologist who presented an objection to Clausius's kinetic theory. Since the particles must be moving at great velocity, people in the back of a room should almost instantaneously smell hydrogen sulfide created in the front of the room, which is not observed. Clausius resolved this paradox by explaining the motion of particles as a random walk resulting from many collisions.

Buys-Ballot also conducted one of the most famous experiments to confirm the Doppler shift. He put a group of musicians on a train and took up his position on a station platform. He asked the train driver to rush past him as fast as he could while the musicians played and held a constant note, and was able to detect the Doppler shift (as a change in pitch) as the train passed him (Filkin and Hawking 1997, p. 65).