Jean Coulomb
Jean Coulomb ( born May 7, 1904 in Blida, Algeria, † 26 February 1999 in Paris) was a French geophysicists and applied mathematicians. He had a leading role in the French Geophysics and space research.
Coulomb studied from 1923 at the Ecole Normal Superieure, received the Agrégation in mathematics in 1928 and his doctorate in 1931, while he was preparator and assistant of Marcel Brillouin at the College de France. 1933-1937 he worked as a meteorologist at the observatory of the Puy de Dome and ran from 1937 to 1941, the geophysical and meteorological Institute in Algeria. 1941 until his retirement in 1972 he was Professor of Geophysics ( Physique du Globe ) at the Sorbonne. 1941 to 1956 he headed the Institut de Physique du Globe de Paris.
In 1951 he was president of the International Society of Terrestrial Magnetism and Electricity of the Earth ( International Association of Terrestrial Magnetism and Electricity ). 1967 to 1971 he was President of the International Geodetic and Geophysical Union ( International Union of Geodesy and Geophysics, IUGG ). In 1972 he was president of the International Council of Scientific Unions.
In 1954/55 he was a visiting professor in Istanbul. 1956 to 1962 he was Director and then Director General of the CNRS. 1967 to 1969 he was director of the Bureau des Longitudes.
As a member of a Committee for Space Research of the IUGG, he convinced other at a meeting in Moscow in 1955, Nikita Khrushchev to get involved there, what happened in the Sputnik program.
He was mainly theorists and dealt with Seismology, Atmospheric electricity and cloud physics, geomagnetism (magnetic pulsations, interpretation of the secular variation of the geomagnetic field by convection currents in the Earth's core ), origin of gravity anomalies. In the seismometry he developed a detailed theory of electrical seismograph and he examined the formation of surface waves from earthquakes and the propagation of seismic waves across oceans (T- waves, marine micro-earthquakes ).
He was largely responsible for the CNRS in the organization and financing of large geophysical programs. He cared d' Aeronomy Verrières le Buisson for the construction of geophysical observatories in Bangui, Dakar, Terre Adelie and on the Kerguelen, for the establishment of the Centre de Recherches Geophysiques in Garchy, the Groupe de Recherches Ionosphériques in Saint Maur, the service and the Institut National d' Astronomy et de Geophysique.
As an Applied Mathematician he belonged in the 1930s to the early Bourbaki group. Treat from the original intention of the Applied Mathematics was then but nothing.
In 1971 he was awarded the Prix des trois physiciens, 1955 the Prix Holweck. In 1960 he became a member of the Academie des Sciences, which he was President 1977/78. In 1995 he received the Grand Cross of the Legion of Honour, the Order of Merit Grand Cross of the Ordre and was an officer of the Ordre du Mérite Saharien.
He is a member of the Royal Society, the Royal Astronomical Society and the Belgian, Romanian and Danish Academy of Sciences and the Academia Europaea. 1962 to 1967 he was president of the Centre national d' études spatiales ( CNES ).
Writings
- With Marcel Brillouin: Oscillations d'un liquid pesant dans un bassin cylindrique s rotation, Gauthier Villars, 1933
- With J. Loisel: La physique of Nuages , Albin Michel, 1940
- Seismometry, in Siegfried Flügge et al Encyclopedia 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
- English Translation: Sea floor spreading and continental drift, Reidel 1972