Eugène-Maurice-Pierre Cosserat (4 March 1866 – 31 May 1931) was a
French mathematician
A mathematician is someone who uses an extensive knowledge of mathematics in their work, typically to solve mathematical problems.
Mathematicians are concerned with numbers, data, quantity, structure, space, models, and change.
History
On ...
and
astronomer
An astronomer is a scientist in the field of astronomy who focuses their studies on a specific question or field outside the scope of Earth. They observe astronomical objects such as stars, planets, moons, comets and galaxies – in either ...
.
Born in
Amiens
Amiens (English: or ; ; pcd, Anmien, or ) is a city and commune in northern France, located north of Paris and south-west of Lille. It is the capital of the Somme department in the region of Hauts-de-France. In 2021, the population of ...
, he studied at the
École Normale Supérieure
École may refer to:
* an elementary school in the French educational stages normally followed by secondary education establishments (collège and lycée)
* École (river), a tributary of the Seine flowing in région Île-de-France
* École, S ...
from 1883 to 1888.
He was on Science faculty of
Toulouse University
The University of Toulouse (french: Université de Toulouse) was a university in the French city of Toulouse that was established by papal bull in 1229, making it one of the earliest universities to emerge in Europe. Suppressed during the Frenc ...
from 1889 and director of its observatory from 1908, a position he held for the rest of his life.
He was elected to the
Académie des Sciences
The French Academy of Sciences (French: ''Académie des sciences'') is a learned society, founded in 1666 by Louis XIV at the suggestion of Jean-Baptiste Colbert, to encourage and protect the spirit of French scientific research. It was at th ...
in 1919.
His studies included the
rings
Ring may refer to:
* Ring (jewellery), a round band, usually made of metal, worn as ornamental jewelry
* To make a sound with a bell, and the sound made by a bell
:(hence) to initiate a telephone connection
Arts, entertainment and media Film and ...
and
satellites of Saturn
The moons of Saturn are numerous and diverse, ranging from tiny moonlets only tens of meters across to enormous Titan, which is larger than the planet Mercury. Saturn has 83 moons with confirmed orbits that are not embedded in its rings—of wh ...
,
comets
A comet is an icy, small Solar System body that, when passing close to the Sun, warms and begins to release gases, a process that is called outgassing. This produces a visible atmosphere or coma, and sometimes also a tail. These phenomena ar ...
and
double stars
In observational astronomy, a double star or visual double is a pair of stars that appear close to each other as viewed from Earth, especially with the aid of optical telescopes.
This occurs because the pair either forms a binary star (i.e. a bi ...
, but is best remembered for work with his engineer brother
François
François () is a French masculine given name and surname, equivalent to the English name Francis.
People with the given name
* Francis I of France, King of France (), known as "the Father and Restorer of Letters"
* Francis II of France, Kin ...
on
surface mechanics, particularly problems of
elasticity.
Their work on elasticity described an extension of the classical theory to include a description of micro-rotation of material points in addition to the classical description of deformation. Their work lacked key elements and lay dormant until the 1960s at which time it was reopened by several authors. It has become known as the theory of
micropolar elasticity and has remained an active research area ever since.
Works
*
Sources
*Who's Who in Science, pub. Marquis Who's Who, Chicago Ill. 1968
*J R Levy, Biography in Dictionary of Scientific Biography (New York 1970-1990)
*L Montangerand, Eloge de Cosserat, Ann. de l'Observatoire de Toulouse 10 (1933), 20-30.
See also
*
Cosserat metamaterials
*
Cosserat rod theory
*
Elastica theory
*
Gyrostat
A gyroscope (from Ancient Greek γῦρος ''gŷros'', "round" and σκοπέω ''skopéō'', "to look") is a device used for measuring or maintaining orientation and angular velocity. It is a spinning wheel or disc in which the axis of rota ...
*
Material point method The material point method (MPM) is a numerical technique used to simulate the behavior of solids, liquids, gases, and any other continuum material. Especially, it is a robust spatial discretization method for simulating multi-phase (solid-fluid-ga ...
*
Noether's theorem
Noether's theorem or Noether's first theorem states that every differentiable symmetry of the action of a physical system with conservative forces has a corresponding conservation law. The theorem was proven by mathematician Emmy Noether ...
References
External links
*
1866 births
1931 deaths
20th-century French astronomers
19th-century French mathematicians
20th-century French mathematicians
Members of the French Academy of Sciences
University of Toulouse faculty
{{France-mathematician-stub