Charles de Coulomb
Claimed by Alanna Carnevale
Charles-Augustin de Coulomb was a French physicist most well known for the discovery of Coulomb's Law and his work with friction. The SI unit for electric charge known as the coulomb was named after him.
Personal Life
Coulomb was born in Angoulême, France, on June 14, 1736 to Henry Coulomb and Catherine Bajet. Both his parents were rather wealthy, as his father was a lawyer, and his mother came from a well-established family. After being raised in Angoulême, Coulomb and his family moved to Paris where he would enter college.
When Henry Coulomb made poor financial choices, lost all of his money, and moved to Montpellier, Charles de Coulomb had to make the decision of whether to move with him or stay in Paris with his mother. Coulomb decided to live with his father after a disagreement with mother about his future career. In March 1757, he joined the Society of Sciences in Montpellier to whom which he would read many papers on mathematics as well as astronomy. Around February 1760, when Coulomb was entering the École du Génie at Mézières he made many significant friends including Bossut and Borda.
During the beginning of the French Revolution, Coulomb was in intense scientific study. He was expelled from the government as many French aristocrats were at the time, and he retired from the Corps du Genie. Coulomb married the mother of his two sons in 1802, Louise Francoise LeProust Desormeaux. Due to work in the West Indies, Coulomb suffered from sicknesses that caused him to be in poor health for the rest of his life. He fell ill with a fever in 1796 and passed away on August 23, 1806 in Paris at the age of 70.
University Education and Career
Charles de Coulomb started his college education at Collège Mazarin in Paris where he learned language, literature, philosophy, mathematics, astronomy, chemistry, and botany. He was most interested in mathematics and astronomy. After moving to Montpellier Coulomb realized he wanted to enter the École du Génie at Mézières but first needed to be tutored so that he could pass the entrance exams. Coulomb studied Camus’s Cours de mathématiques and passed the exams. He graduaded from École du Génie at Mézières in November 1761.
As both a trained engineer and a Corps du Génie lieutenant, Coulomb would be take on a variety of career positions. He went from Brest in February of 1764 to Martinique in the West Indies where he would contribute to making the island safer by building a fort named Fort Bourbon. Coulomb also spent time in Bouchain as well as Cherbourg where Coulomb submitted a memoir to the appointed comptroller general Robert-Jacques Turgot that regarded possible reformations. Coulomb’s political views were present in this memoir and he included how he wanted the state and the individual to be equal.