Coulomb

Charles Augustin de Coulomb

Born: 14 June 1736 in Angoulême, France
Died: 23 Aug 1806 in Paris, France

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Coulomb spent 9 years as a military engineer in the West Indies but his health suffered so, when the French Revolution began, he retired to the country to do scientific research.

Coulomb worked on applied mechanics but he is best known for his work on electricity and magnetism. He established experimentally the inverse square law for the force between two charges which became the basis of Poisson's mathematical theory of magnetism.

Coulomb also wrote on structural analysis, the fracture of beams, the fracture of columns, the thrust of arches and the thrust of the soil.

References:

  1. Dictionary of Scientific Biography
  2. Biography in Encyclopaedia Britannica
  3. C S Gillmor, Charles Augustin Coulomb : Physics and Engineering in Eighteenth Century France (1971). 
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JOC/EFR February 1996