Maurice Couette

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Maurice Marie Alfred Couette (born January 9, 1858 in Tours , † August 18, 1943 in Angers ) was a French physicist, known for his work on rheology .

Couette was the son of a clothes dealer in Tours. He studied in Tours and Angers and received bachelor's degrees in physics and mathematics in 1877 and 1879 (issued by the Faculté de Science at Poitiers University ). After one year of military service and a short time as a teacher, he went to Paris in 1881, where he studied mathematics and physics at the Sorbonne , with the aim of becoming a teacher ( Agrégation ). He then worked as a physics teacher in Arcueil and Paris (Ecole Sainte-Geneviève). At the Sorbonne he studied with the theorist Joseph Boussinesq (known for his work in continuum mechanics) and from 1887 worked in the physics laboratory of the experimental physicist and later Nobel laureate Gabriel Lippmann , where he received his doctorate in 1890 on friction in liquids (Etude sur le frottement des liquides, Gauthiers-Villars 1890). He then became a professor at the Catholic University in Angers (today Université Catholique de l'Ouest ). Since the professorship was badly paid, however, he had to work as an examiner and teacher in schools, as he did during his studies. In 1933 he retired.

He built a cylindrical viscometer for liquids and determined the viscosity of water and air with remarkable accuracy. The flow form that forms between oppositely rotating cylinder disks is called Couette flow (or Taylor-Couette flow). Both developments came from his dissertation. He not only examined the stability of liquids between rotating cylinders, but also other forms of flow (e.g. oscillating bodies, flows in pipes) and examined the transition to turbulence and the influence of wall friction. He is also known for a correction method named after him for end effects in capillary flows (1890).

He also dealt with osmosis in batteries and published numerous articles in the journal La Science Catholique . He was a member of the French physical society.

The GFR Maurice Couette Award of the French Rheological Society (GFR), which has existed since 1993, is named after him.

He had been married since 1886 and had eight children, five of whom reached adulthood.

literature

  • M. Piau, J.-M. Piau, JM Couette, M. Bremond. Maurice Couette- one of the founders of rheology , Rheologica Acta, Vol. 33, 1994, pp. 357-368 (and in French Cahiers de Rheologie, Vol. 12, 1994, pp. 47-69)
  • Donnelly Taylor-Couette Flow. The early days , Physics Today, November 1991
  • Couette: La viscosité des liquides , Bulletin des Sciences Physique, Vol. 4, 1888, pp. 40, 123, 262, and as a book by Georges Carré, Paris 1888
  • Couette Sur un nouvel appareil pour l etude de frottement des liquids , Compte Rend. Acad., Sci., Vol. 107, 1888, pp. 388-390
  • Couette: Oscillations tournantes d´une solid de révolution en contact avec un fluid visqueux , Compte Rend. Acad. Sci., Vol. 105, 1887, pp. 1064-1067

Web links

Jean-Michel Piau, Monique Piau: The GFR's Maurice Couette Prize. (pdf) Laboratoire de Rhéologie, Université Joseph Fourier-Grenoble, September 30, 2005, archived from the original on November 23, 2006 (English, with a portrait and a picture of his apparatus, which has been preserved at the Catholic University in Angers).;

References

  1. ↑ Piau u. a., Appreciation on the occasion of the Couette Prize, see web links
  2. ^ Jean-Michel Piau, Monique Piau: The GFR's Maurice Couette Prize. (pdf) Laboratoire de Rhéologie, Université Joseph Fourier-Grenoble, September 30, 2005, archived from the original on November 23, 2006 (English).;
personal data
SURNAME Couette, Maurice
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Couette, Maurice Marie Alfred
BRIEF DESCRIPTION French physicist
DATE OF BIRTH January 9, 1858
PLACE OF BIRTH Tours
DATE OF DEATH August 18, 1943
Place of death Angers