Eug̬ne-Maurice-Pierre Cosserat (4 March 1866 Р31 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, mathematical structure, structure, space, Mathematica ...
and
astronomer
An astronomer is a scientist in the field of astronomy who focuses on a specific question or field outside the scope of Earth. Astronomers observe astronomical objects, such as stars, planets, natural satellite, moons, comets and galaxy, galax ...
.
Born in
Amiens
Amiens (English: or ; ; , or ) is a city and Communes of France, commune in northern France, located north of Paris and south-west of Lille. It is the capital of the Somme (department), Somme Departments of France, department in the region ...
, he studied at the
École Normale Supérieure
École or Ecole may refer to:
* an elementary school in the French educational stages normally followed by Secondary education in France, secondary education establishments (collège and lycée)
* École (river), a tributary of the Seine flowing i ...
from 1883 to 1888.
He was on Science faculty of
Toulouse University 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 in 1919.
His studies included the
rings and
satellites of Saturn,
comets and
double stars, but is best remembered for work with his engineer brother
François
François () is a French language, French masculine given name and surname, equivalent to the English name Francis (given name), Francis.
People with the given name
* François Amoudruz (1926–2020), French resistance fighter
* Voltaire, Fran ...
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
*
Material point method
*
Noether's theorem
Noether's theorem states that every continuous symmetry of the action of a physical system with conservative forces has a corresponding conservation law. This is the first of two theorems (see Noether's second theorem) published by the mat ...
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
Academic staff of the University of Toulouse
{{France-mathematician-stub