Jean Baptiste Meusnier

Jean Baptiste Marie Charles Meusnier de la Place, often simply quoted Meusnier, ( born June 19, 1754 Tours, † June 13, 1793 in Mainz -Kastel ) was a French mathematician, engineer and General.

Life and vocation

Meusnier came from an old family of officials and lawyers in Tours. He was privately tutored and attended 1774/5 the Military Academy ( Ecole royale du genie de Mézières ) in Mézières, where he trained as an engineer. One of his teachers there was Gaspard Monge, who encouraged him to study with differential geometry. Meusnier called Monge on the first day of his arrival out to test his math skills. Monge asked him the task of proving a differential geometric theorem of Euler and Monge's astonishment gave him Meusnier the next day a proof that exceeded the Euler. 1776 published his first mathematical treatise Meusnier ( Memoire sur la Courbure des surfaces, Memoirs Mathem.Phys.Acad.Science, Paris, Bd.10, 1785, S.477 -510, read in 1776 ) with new results on the differential geometry of curves and surfaces. Among other things, he showed that in the helicoids ( tooth surface ) is a minimal surface. After Meusnier also the set of Meusnier on the curvature of curves is named by a point on a surface, which he proved in the same paper of 1776. Meusnier also worked about in the 1780s with Antoine Lavoisier in the electrolysis and found it already hydrogen forth without that he could name the element. Meusnier also dealt with the theory of machines.

Military engineer

1776, he joined the army and went through a meteoric career. He was a military engineer in Verdun and Cherbourg. On May 5, 1793 Meusnier de la Place des 14e Regiment d'Infanterie de Ligne was promoted to General de Division.

Became known Meusnier de la Place, in 1784 when he proposed a draft inflatable airship. In the absence to date not yet available driving units he suggested to construct front of a human-powered propeller, which should operate the airship occupants. In addition Meusnier invented the so-called ballonets which compensate the inevitable loss of gas - a technique used today. From the following year comes an airship design, which reveals all the essential components of an airship already, with an elongated, windschnittigeren form, on their own initiative, controllability. Above all, these ideas meant that he was admitted to the French Academy of Sciences on January 3, 1784.

Meusnier de la Place died in fighting around the so-called "main peak " during the siege of Mainz by coalition forces in the case suffered injuries.

Honors

His name is inscribed on the Arc de Triomphe in Paris in the 6th column ( MEUNIER ).