Charles Joseph Minard

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

Minard studied in 1796 at the École Polytechnique and then at the École Nationale des Ponts et Chaussées. He worked for several years as a civil engineer at the dam, canal and bridge projects throughout Europe, before being appointed in 1830 as head of the École Nationale des Ponts et Chaussées. He held until 1836 this position. He then assumed the role of an Inspector of the Corps des Ponts et Chaussées 1851 and entered into retirement.

Infographic

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

When his best-known work is the Carte Figurative of pertes successives en hommes de l' Armée Française dans la campagne de Russie 1812-1813, a published in 1869, graphics, a Sankey diagram, about the disastrous Russian campaign of 1812 / 13th The unique graphic - Edward Tufte described it as " probably the best infographic of all time" - delivered in a single two-dimensional representation of a large number of variables:

• Position and march towards the army, secession and reunification of formations and units
• The (decreasing ) Strength - particularly striking, for example, the crossing of the Berezina River in retreat
• The unusually low temperatures, which also made ​​it difficult to retreat.