A D V E N T U R E S in C Y B E R S O U N DCharles Augustin de Coulomb : 1736 - 1806
The French physicist Charles Augustin de Coulomb, (b. June 14, 1736, d. Aug. 23, 1806), discovered the law of force between two charged bodies. After his graduation from the Ecole du Genie at Mezieres in 1761, he served as a military engineer in the West Indies and in other obscure French posts. In 1781, he was permanently stationed in Paris and was able to devote more time to research. Coulomb then turned his attention to physics and published (1785-91) seven memoirs on electricity and magnetism. He adapted a torsion balance to measure electrical forces and demonstrated (1785) the inverse-square law of forces for the case of two bodies of opposite electrical charge. In 1787 he further proved the inverse-square law for attractive and repulsive forces in both electricity and magnetism, and he later showed that the force is also proportional to the product of the charges, a relationship now called Coulomb's Law. Coulomb may be considered to have extended Newtonian mechanics to a new realm of physics. The unit of electrical charge is named for him. Sheldon J. Kopperl
Charles Augustin de Coulomb (b. June 14, 1736, Angoulême, Fr.--d. Aug. 23, 1806, Paris), French physicist best known for the formulation of Coulomb's law, which states that the force between two electrical charges is proportional to the product of the charges and inversely proportional to the square of the distance between them. Coulombic force is one of the principal forces involved in atomic reactions. Coulomb spent nine years in the West Indies as a military engineer and returned to France with impaired health. Upon the outbreak of the French Revolution, he retired to a small estate at Blois and devoted himself to scientific research. In 1802 he was appointed an inspector of public instruction. Coulomb developed his law as an outgrowth of his attempt to investigate the law of electrical repulsions as stated by Joseph Priestley of England. To this end he invented sensitive apparatus to measure the electrical forces involved in Priestley's law and published his findings in 1785-89. He also established the inverse square law of attraction and repulsion of unlike and like magnetic poles, which became the basis for the mathematical theory of magnetic forces developed by Siméon-Denis Poisson. He also did research on friction of machinery, on windmills, and on the elasticity of metal and silk fibres. The coulomb, a unit of electric charge, was named in his honour.
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