PHYSICIST

Charles-Augustin de Coulomb

1736 - 1806

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Charles-Augustin de Coulomb ( KOO-lom, -⁠lohm, koo-LOM, -⁠LOHM; French: [kulɔ̃]; 14 June 1736 – 23 August 1806) was a French officer, engineer, and physicist. He is best known as the eponymous discoverer of what is now called Coulomb's law, the description of the electrostatic force of attraction and repulsion. He also did important work on friction, and his work on earth pressure formed the basis for the later development of much of the science of soil mechanics. The SI unit of electric charge, the coulomb, was named in his honor in 1880. Read more on Wikipedia

His biography is available in different languages on Wikipedia. Charles-Augustin de Coulomb is the 40th most popular physicist (down from 24th in 2019), the 124th most popular biography from France (down from 90th in 2019) and the 5th most popular French Physicist.

Charles-Augustin de Coulomb is most famous for his law of electrostatics. This law states that the magnitude of the electric force between two point charges is proportional to the product of the charges and inversely proportional to the square of the distance between them.

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Among PHYSICISTS

Among physicists, Charles-Augustin de Coulomb ranks 40 out of 851. Before him are Christiaan Huygens, James Clerk Maxwell, Louis de Broglie, Hendrik Lorentz, Daniel Bernoulli, and Lise Meitner. After him are Charles H. Townes, Pieter Zeeman, William Gilbert, Luigi Galvani, Nevill Francis Mott, and David J. Thouless.

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Contemporaries

Among people born in 1736, Charles-Augustin de Coulomb ranks 3. Before him are James Watt, and Joseph-Louis Lagrange. After him are Jean Sylvain Bailly, Rama I, Johann Georg Albrechtsberger, James Macpherson, Claude Nicolas Ledoux, Princess Friederike of Brandenburg-Schwedt, Rudolf Erich Raspe, Louis Joseph, Prince of Condé, and Franz Xaver Messerschmidt. Among people deceased in 1806, Charles-Augustin de Coulomb ranks 1. After him are Jean-Honoré Fragonard, Ferdinand Karl, Archduke of Austria-Este, Charles William Ferdinand, Duke of Brunswick, William Pitt the Younger, Charles-Henri Sanson, William V, Prince of Orange, Jean-Jacques Dessalines, Carlo Gozzi, Michael Haydn, Francis, Duke of Saxe-Coburg-Saalfeld, and Pierre-Charles Villeneuve.

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In France

Among people born in France, Charles-Augustin de Coulomb ranks 124 out of 6,770. Before him are Joseph Louis Gay-Lussac (1778), André Gide (1869), Nicolas Poussin (1594), Philippe Pétain (1856), Catherine of Valois (1401), and Joseph Fourier (1768). After him are Philip II of France (1165), Charles Aznavour (1924), Peter Abelard (1079), Pope Gregory XI (1370), Marie Thérèse of France (1778), and François Hollande (1954).

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Among PHYSICISTS In France

Among physicists born in France, Charles-Augustin de Coulomb ranks 5. Before him are Pierre Curie (1859), André-Marie Ampère (1775), Henri Becquerel (1852), and Louis de Broglie (1892). After him are Gaspard-Gustave de Coriolis (1792), Henry Cavendish (1731), Léon Foucault (1819), Frédéric Joliot-Curie (1900), Jean Baptiste Perrin (1870), François Arago (1786), and Albert Fert (1938).

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