Background
Charles Augustin de Coulomb was born on June 14, 1736, in Angoulême, France, the son of Henry Coulomb and Catherine Bajet. He was raised there for 7 years before beginning his education.
Paris, France
Coulomb attended lectures at the Collège Mazarin and the college de France.
Coulomb graduated in November 1761 from École royale du génie de Mézières.
Charles Augustin de Coulomb was born on June 14, 1736, in Angoulême, France, the son of Henry Coulomb and Catherine Bajet. He was raised there for 7 years before beginning his education.
During Coulomb’s youth, the family moved from Angoulême to Paris, where he attended lectures at the Collège Mazarin and the college de France. His studies included philosophy, language, and literature. He also received a good education in mathematics, astronomy, chemistry, and botany. Coulomb graduated in November 1761 from École royale du génie de Mézières.
An argument with his mother over career plans caused Coulomb to follow his father to Montpellier after the latter became penniless through financial speculations. Couloub joined the Société des Sciences de Montpellier as an adjoint member in March 1757 and read several papers in astronomy and mathematics there during the next two years.
He went to Paris in the autumn of 1758, seeking the tutoring necessary for him to enter the École du Genie at Mézières. After some months of study, he passed the abbé Charles Camus’s entrance examination and took up residence at Mézières in February 1760. At about this time he formed lasting friendships with Jean Charles Borda and with the abbé Charles Bossut, his teacher of mathematics at Mézières. Coulomb graduated in November 1761 with the rank of lieutenant en premier in the Corps du Génie. His first post was at Brest; but in February 1764 he was ordered suddenly to proceed to Martinique, where he remained until June 1772. Coulomb was put in charge of constructing Fort Bourbon, at a cost of six million livres. He directed several hundred laborers in all phases of the construction, and this experience was important as a foundation for some of his later memoirs in mechanics. Coulomb became seriously ill several times during his stay in Martinique, and these illnesses affected his health to the extent that he was never again a well man.
Following his return to France, Coulomb was posted to Bouchain, where he composed an important memoir in mechanics that earned him the title of Bossut’s correspondent to the Paris Academy of Sciences (6 July 1774). Coulomb moved then to duty at Cherbourg, where he began work on a memoir on magnetic compasses that subsequently shared first prize in the Paris Academy’s competition for 1777.
One other event during his stay at Cherbourg merits attention: his submission in 1776 of a plan for the reorganization of the Corps du Génie. The comte de St.-Germain became minister of war in October 1775, during the administration of Turgot. Coincident with Turgot’s reform aims, St.-Germain called for memoirs on the reorganization of the Génie. Coulomb’s unpublished “Mémoire sur le service des officiers du Corps du Génie” was organized around two principles, the individual and the state. He sought to define the maximum utility to be obtained for each and to show that the best use of the Génie brought the most to each individual.
Coulomb saw the opportunity for public works in time of peace and favored the establishment of review boards to judge the worth of proposed projects. Most of all, he saw the Corps du Génie and public service as a whole as a “corps a talent,” that is, with appointment and advancement based on ability and accomplishment. He stressed not the evils of the state but the potential of the state and individual in balance.
Coulomb was posted to Rochefort in 1779 to aid the notorious marquis de Montalembert in constructing his controversial fort entirely of wood on the nearby Île d’Aix. During this period Coulomb found time to engage in a lengthy series of experiments on friction in the shipyards at Rochefort. The result of these researches won the double first prize at the Academy in Paris in 1781 and gained Coulomb election to the Academy as adjoint mécanicien. Membership in the Academy finally assured Coulomb of a Paris residence, after seven different field posts and twenty years’ service in the Corps du Génie.
The year 1781 marked a decisive break in Coulomb’s life and career. Permanently stationed in Paris, he could find a wife and raise a family. Henceforth, his engineering duties would be only as a consultant, and he was able to devote the major portion of his time to researches in physics. Coulomb the engineer became a physicist and public servant. He read twenty-five scientific memoirs at the Academy (and at its successor, the Institut de France) from 1781 to 1806. His most famous memoirs were the series of seven memoirs on electricity and magnetism and the memoirs on torsion and the applications of the torsion balance. In addition to his physics research Coulomb participated in 310 committee reports to the Academy concerning machines, instruments, canals, and engineering and civic projects. In 1787 Coulomb and Jacques Rene Tenon were sent to England to investigate hospital conditions in London. In 1801 Coulomb with whom Coulomb worked most closely were geometers, mechanicians, or astronomers.
Coulomb’s most celebrated engineering consulting task was in Brittany in 1783-1784. Here he became involved, against his will, in a commission to recommend canal and harbor improvements. The commission submitted a critical report and Coulomb suffered as the scapegoat, being confined to prison for one week in November 1783. Coulomb’s excellent reports to the Academy on canals and water supply systems led the comte d’Angiviller to nominate him in July 1784 as intendant of the royal waters and fountains. The task of intendant involved supervising the management of water systems in all royal properties, including a good part of the water supply of Paris. Most biographical sketches of Coulomb mention that he was appointed a curator of the large collection of secret military relief maps of French cities and fortresses. Archival records, however, indicate this not to be so.
The Revolution of 1789 caused little outward change in Coulomb’s activities. He was in the midst of his great series of memoirs on electricity and magnetism, and his committee reports to the Academy continued as usual. By 1791, however, the National Assembly had overturned or reorganized many of the institutions of the ancien regime, and such measures applied to the Corps du Génie led Coulomb to resign from the corps in April 1791. He retired with the rank of lieutenant, colonel, was holder of the Croix de St. Louis, and had thirty-one years’ service in the corps. He obtained an annual pension of 2,240 livres, which was reduced by two-thirds after the Revolution. Coulomb continued active participation in the Academy until its abolition on 8 August 1793. About the same time he was removed from his position as intendant of waters. He continued work on a committee for standardization of weights and measures until it was “purged” in December 1793. At this time he and Borda retired to La Justinière, some property Coulomb owned near Blois. He returned to his research in Paris in December 1795, upon his election as a member of physique expérimentale in the new Institut de France.
Coulomb’s last public service was as inspector general of public instrucion from 1802 until his death in 1806, in which office he played a significant role in supervising the establishment of the French system of lycées. Coulomb’s health, weakened long before during his duty in Martinique, declined precipitously in the early summer of 1806, and he died on the morning of 23 August. Since he had been baptized in the Roman Catholic faith, his final services were held at the Abbaye de St.-Germain-des-Prés.
Coulomb was baptized in the Roman Catholic faith, so his final services were held at the Abbaye de St.-Germain-des-Prés. There is little evidence, however, to indicate the extent of his religious convictions.
Coulomb legitimized his marriage to Louise Francoise LeProust Desormeaux in 1802. His elder son, Charles Augustin II, was born in Paris on 26 February 1790 and his younger son, Henry Louis, was born there on 30 July 1797.