Jean Coulomb
Jean Coulomb (born May 7, 1904 in Blida , Algeria , † February 26, 1999 in Paris ) was a French geophysicist and applied mathematician. He had a leading role in French geophysics and space exploration.
Coulomb studied from 1923 at the École normal supérieure , received the Agrégation in mathematics in 1928 and received his doctorate in 1931 while he was taxidermist and assistant to Marcel Brillouin at the Collège de France . From 1933 to 1937 he worked as a meteorologist at the Puy de Dôme observatory and from 1937 to 1941 he headed the geophysical-meteorological institute in Algeria. From 1941 until his retirement in 1972 he was Professor of Geophysics (Physique du Globe) at the Sorbonne . From 1941 to 1956 he headed the Institut de physique du globe de Paris .
In 1951 he was President of the International Association of Magnetism and Terrestrial Electricity. From 1967 to 1971 he was President of the International Union of Geodesy and Geophysics (IUGG). In 1972 he was President of the International Council of Scientific Unions.
In 1954/55 he was visiting professor in Istanbul. From 1956 to 1962 he was director and then general director of the CNRS. From 1967 to 1969 he was director of the Bureau des Longitudes .
As a member of a committee for space research of the IUGG, he and others at a conference in Moscow in 1955 convinced Nikita Khrushchev to get involved there, which was done in the Sputnik program.
He was mainly a theorist and dealt with seismology , atmospheric electricity and the physics of clouds, geomagnetism (magnetic pulsations, interpretation of the secular variation of the earth's magnetic field by convection currents in the earth's core), origin of gravity anomalies. In seismometry he developed a detailed theory of electrical seismographs and he investigated the formation of surface waves in earthquakes and the propagation of earthquake waves over oceans (T waves, marine microquakes).
He was instrumental in organizing and funding major geophysical programs at CNRS. He was responsible for the establishment of geophysical observatories in Bangui , Dakar , Terre Adelie and the Kerguelen , for the establishment of the Center de Recherches Geophysiques in Garchy , the Groupe de Recherches Ionosphériques in Saint Maur , the Service d'Aéronomie in Verrières le Buisson and des Institut National d'Astronomie et de Geophysique.
As an applied mathematician, he belonged to the early Bourbaki group in the 1930s . But then nothing came of the original intention to also cover applied mathematics.
In 1971 he received the Prix des trois physiciens , 1961 the Jules Janssen Prize , and 1955 the Prix Holweck . In 1960 he became a member of the Académie des Sciences , of which he was president in 1977/78. In 1995 he received the Grand Cross of the Legion of Honor , the Grand Cross of the Ordre du Mérite and was an officer of the Ordre du Mérite Saharan.
He was a member of the Royal Society , the Royal Astronomical Society and the Belgian, Romanian and Danish Academy of Sciences and the Academia Europaea . From 1962 to 1967 he was President of the Center national d'études spatiales (CNES).
Fonts
- with Marcel Brillouin: Oscillations d'un liquide pesant dans un bassin cylindrique en rotation, Gauthier Villars, 1933
- with J. Loisel: La physique des Nuages, Albin Michel, 1940
- Séismométrie, in Siegfried Flügge u. a. Handbook of Physics , Volume 47, Springer Verlag 1956
- with others: Traité de Géophysique internal, Volume 1, Masson, 1973, Volume 2, 1976
- La constitution physique de la terre, A. Michel 1952
- English translation, with Georges Jobert: Physical constitution of the earth, New York, Hafner 1963
- L'expansion des fonds océaniques et la dérive des continents, Paris, Presses Universitaire de France 1969
- English translation: Sea floor spreading and continental drift, Reidel 1972
Web links
Individual evidence
- ^ Obituary by Jacques Blamont, Astronomy & Geophysics, August 1999
| personal data | |
|---|---|
| SURNAME | Coulomb, Jean |
| BRIEF DESCRIPTION | French geophysicist |
| DATE OF BIRTH | May 7, 1904 |
| PLACE OF BIRTH | Blida |
| DATE OF DEATH | February 26, 1999 |
| Place of death | Paris |