Maurice Couette

Maurice Marie Alfred Couette ( born January 9, 1858 in Tours, † August 18, 1943 in Angers) was a French physicist, known for his work on the rheology.

Couette was the son of a clothes dealer in Tours. He studied at Tours and Angers in 1877 and 1879 and received bachelor's degrees in physics and mathematics ( issued by the Faculté de Science in Poitiers). After a year of military service, and a short time as a teacher, he went to Paris in 1881, where he studied at the Sorbonne, mathematics and physics, with the aim to become a teacher ( aggregation). He then worked as a physics teacher in Arcueil and Paris ( Ecole Sainte -Geneviève ). At the Sorbonne he studied with the theorist Joseph Boussinesq (known for work in continuum mechanics) and from 1887 was in the physics laboratory of the experimental physicist and later Nobel Laureate Gabriel Lippmann, in which he frottement 1890 friction in liquids doctorate ( Etude sur le of the most liquid, Gauthier -Villars, 1890). He was then a professor at the Catholic University of Angers ( Université Catholique de l' Ouest today ). Since the professor was but poorly paid, he had casually work in schools as an examiner and teacher, as already during his studies. In 1933 he retired.

He built a cylindrical viscometer for liquids and determined the viscosity of water and air with remarkable accuracy. The forms between contra-rotating cylindrical disks form of flow is called Couette flow ( or Taylor - Couette flow ). Both developments came even from his dissertation. He examined not only the stability of fluids between rotating cylinders, but also other types of flow (eg oscillating body, flows in pipes ) and examined the transition to turbulence and the influence of wall friction. He is also known for an eponymous Korrektionsmethode for end effects in Kapillarströmungen ( 1890).

He also dealt with the osmosis in batteries and has published numerous articles in the journal La Science Catholique. He was a member of the French Physical Society.

An existing since 1993 Prize of the French Theological Society ( GFR) is named after him.

He was married in 1886 and had eight children, five of whom reached adulthood.