Joseph Valentin Boussinesq

Joseph Valentin Boussinesq ( born March 13, 1842 in Saint -André -de- Sangonis ( Hérault ), † February 19, 1929 in Paris) was a French mathematician and physicist.

Life and work

Joseph Boussinesq his doctorate in 1867. From 1872 to 1886 he was professor of differential and integral calculus in University of Lille I and in 1886 took over the chair of physics and mechanics at the Sorbonne in Paris. In the same year he became a member of the French Academy of Sciences.

Boussinesq made ​​a decisive contribution to the understanding of turbulence and the hydrodynamic boundary layer by the publication of his work, entitled Théorie de l' écoulement tourbillonnant et tumultueux the most liquid.

According to him, the Boussinesq approximation is named, a simplification of the incompressible Navier -Stokes equations.

In 1871, he treated first soliton water waves and 1877, the Korteweg -de Vries equation.

He is also known for the solution of the problem of a point load on the elastic half-space with applications for example, in Geotechnics in the derivation of the distribution of soil pressure ( Sohldruckverteilung ) under foundations. Under an ideally rigid foundation take Boussinesqs theory to the voltages to the edge, and will seek theoretically to infinity.