Charles Joseph Minard

Charles Joseph Minard (born March 27, 1781 in Dijon , † October 24, 1870 in Bordeaux ) was a French civil engineer who made significant contributions to the development of information graphics .

Minard studied from 1796 at the École polytechnique and then at the École Nationale des Ponts et Chaussées . He worked for several years as a civil engineer on dam, canal and bridge projects across Europe before he was appointed head of the École Nationale des Ponts et Chaussées in 1830 . He held this position until 1836. He then took on the role of inspector of the Corps des Ponts et Chaussées and retired in 1851.

Infographic

Minard's graphic about Napoleon's Russian campaign

Minard was a pioneer of graphical information transfer in engineering and statistics.

His best-known work is the Carte figurative des pertes successives en hommes de l'Armée Française dans la campagne de Russie 1812–1813 , a graphic published in 1869, a Sankey diagram , about the devastating Russian campaign of 1812/1813. The unique graphic - Edward Tufte called it “probably the best infographic of all time” - conveys a large number of variables in a single two-dimensional representation:

• Position and direction of march of the army, separation and reunification of units
• The (decreasing) troop strength - particularly striking is e.g. B. the crossing of the Berezina River in retreat
• The unusually low temperatures that made it even more difficult to withdraw. (The temperature specifications are in Réaumur (−30 ° Réaumur = −37.5 ° Celsius ))

Web links

Commons : Charles Joseph Minard  - Album with pictures, videos and audio files

literature

• Rendgen, Sandra (2018): The Minard System. The Complete Statistical Graphics of Charles-Joseph Minard. New York, Princeton Architectural Press , 2018, ISBN 1-61689-633-7 .