Charles-Augustin de Coulomb (born in 1736) was a French officer, engineer, and physicist. He is best known for his eponymous law of electrostatic force and SI unit for amount of electric charge. He was also a an army engineer and published works on retaining wall design.
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| Portrait by Hippolyte Lecomte |
He studied at at Collège Mazarin.and later at the École royale du génie de Mézières in Paris having already been published in the Society of Sciences in Montpellier. On graduating he joined the French Army as an engineer and participated in numerous projects in France and their colonies. At the same time he carried out research developing the torsion balance (critical to later work on electromechanical attraction), friction and geotechnical engineering.
After the French Revolution he was employed in devising the new weights and measures for the Revolutionary government and was one of the first members of the French National Institute.
He died in 1806
Also, 100 years ago today, Sir James Whyte Black OM FRS FRSE FRCP was born. He was a Scottish physician and pharmacologist. In 1988 he shared the Nobel Prize for Medicine for pioneering strategies for rational drug-design. He died in 2010
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