Coulomb’s Law, one of the fundamental laws of electromagnetism, was named after Charles-Augustin de Coulomb. This law describes the electrostatic relationship between electric charges and magnetic poles.
Image Source: Magnet Lab Website
Early Life and Education
Coulomb was a French physicist who was born in Angoulême on June 14, 1736. His father Henry Coulomb was a businessman while his mother Catherine Bajet was from a well-respected family. Raised as a child of privilege, he was educated in prestigious schools in France. His fields of studies included philosophy, language, literature, mathematics, chemistry, engineering and astronomy.
It was in Mazarin College in Paris where Coulomb spent his early days as a young student. But due to their struggles in business, Coulomb relocated to Montpelier with his father and there he joined the Academy of Sciences. In 1760, Coulomb retuned to Paris and began his formal studies at the Royal School of Engineering. In less than two years, he graduated from this institution and then landed his first job in the Military Engineering Corps. Over the next twenty years, Coulomb got involved in many scientific project and research, particularly in the fields of engineering, in various locations in France.
Scientific Work and Research
During his years of study and career in engineering, Coulomb became very prominent in France. Here are his significant works and remarkable awards.
1773 – He submitted his first treatise related to applied mechanics to the Academy of Sciences in Paris.
1777 – He was awarded with a grand prize by the Academy of Sciences for his paper discussing the magnetic compass.
1779 – He was stationed in Rochefort to construct a fort as part of his first engineering assignment.
1781 – He received a prize for his significant scientific research on “friction”.
1784 – He presented his research and experimentation on “torsion force” on metal wires.
1785 to 1789 – He presented various reports on electricity and magnetism.
1789 – He was required to work on the determination of weights and measures as decreed by the French Revolutionary government.
1802 – He became one of the first members of the French National Institute.
Coulomb’s Law
As Coulomb wrote in his paper “Premier mémoire sur l’électricité et le magnétisme”, Coulomb’s law states that “the magnitude of the electrostatic force of interaction between two point charges is directly proportional to the scalar multiplication of the magnitudes of charges and inversely proportional to the square of the distance between them”. This fundamental law became the basis of many scientific theories and discoveries in electricity and magnetism including the work of Hans Christian Oersted and James Clerk Maxwell. The SI unit of electric charge, the coulomb, was named after Charles-Augustin de Coulomb.
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