Pierre-Henri Hugoniot

Pierre -Henri Hugoniot ( born June 5, 1851 in Allenjoie, Doubs, † 1887) was a French ballistics expert, known for studies of shock waves.

Hugoniot visited École polytechnique from 1870, and was after his graduation in 1872 at the Marine artillery. From 1879 to 1882 he was professor of mechanics and ballistics at the Naval Artillery School in Lorient and then Deputy Director of the Central Laboratory of the Marine artillery. In 1884 he became a captain and at the same polytechnique assistant professor of mechanics at the École. With his colleague Hippolyte Sebert (1839-1930), he examined the gas spread in firing cannon. This resulted in 1885, the equation for shock waves that today his name and that of William Rankine (1870 ) bears ( Rankine - Hugoniot equation), published in the Journal of the École polytechnique, as the author was already dead. His ideas were further developed in France by J. Crussard (1907 ) and E. Jouguet (1910 and " Mécanique of Explosifs " 1917).

After Cheret he chose, his skills as a mathematician not appropriate career as an artillery officer because he was bitter about the defeat in the 1870 war against the German Reich.

• Mémoire sur la propagation du mouvement dans un fluid indéfini, CR Acad. Sciences in 1887
• Sur la propagation du mouvement dans les corps et spécialement dans les gaz parfaits, Journal Ecole Polytechnique, Volume 57, 1887, pp. 3-98, Volume 58, 1889, pp. 1-126