Scientific History

Charles Augustin de Coulomb

(1736-1806)

Charles Augustin de Coulomb was a French physicist that was born on June 14th, 1736 in Angouleme, French. Coulomb was a pioneer in electricity theory. Coulomb worked as a military technician for France in West Indies. When the French revolution happened, he retired from his job and lived in Blois, France. There he continued his research in the field of magnetism, friction, and electricity. 

In 1777 he found a torsion balance to measure magnetic force and electric force.With his discovery, Coulomb made research about the force produced by two electrically charged bodies. From the result of his research, he succeeded in finding out that the electric force between two electrically charged bodies was directly proportional to the product of their charges and inversely proportional to the square of distance between those two bodies. That statement is known as Coulomb's law.

In 1779 Coulomb published the treatise Theorie des machines simples (Theory os Simple Machine) that analysed friction in a machine. On August 23rd, 1806 Coulomb died. His name was immortalized as the unit of electric charge, that is Coulomb (C).