Abstract
To mark the bicentenary of the birth of Charles Augustin Coulomb (1736-1806), to which reference was made in NATUBE of June 13, p. 976, Mr. S. B. Hamilton read to the Newcomen Society on December 16 a paper dealing with his work as a “Pioneer in the Science of Construction”. After briefly sketching Coulomb's career, Mr. Hamilton dealt first with Coulomb's paper written in 1773 entitled “Essay on the Application of the Rules of Maxima and Minima to Statical Problems Relating to Architecture”. This paper, which has never been published in English, was concerned with beams, piers and arches. Mr. Hamilton then turned to the researches of Coulomb on torsion, and after reviewing the work of Galileo, Mariotte, Hooke, La Hire and many others, he said that Coulomb, in considering the strength of materials, realized that brittle materials subject to crushing failed by shear; that he recognized the truth of Hookess law and gave it its true place in elastic theory; that his theories of bending and twisting, although incomplete, were a sound contribution to knowledge, and still provide the basis of everyday calculations; that by a stroke of genius he anticipated the modern view that elastic strains are due to distortion of the space lattice within a crystal, while plastic deformation and fracture are due to the development of slip planes; and he also derived a satisfactory simple method of calculating the thrust of earth against retaining walls, and made a sound contribution to the study of masonry arches.
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Coulomb and Structural Engineering. Nature 138, 1089 (1936). https://doi.org/10.1038/1381089a0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/1381089a0