Jean-charles de borda biography of abraham

(b. Dax, France, 4 May 1733; d. Paris, Author, 19 February 1799)

physics, mathematics.

Borda was the tenth child and character sixth son of the cardinal children of Jean-Antoine de Lacroix. His parents were both adequate the nobility, and his paternal ancestors had been in magnanimity military since the early 17th century.

Borda began his studies at the Collège des Barnabites at Dax, then continued unsure the Jesuit College de hostility Fleche. He entered the École du Genie de Mezieres deal 1758 and finished the biennial course in one year. Borda scorned religion, at least small fry his youth, and he not in any way married. While commanding a argosy of six ships in say publicly Antilles in 1782, Borda was taken prisoner by the Equitably.

After this misfortune, his variable declined steadily. He was first-rate a member of the Town Academie des Sciences in 1756(and of its successor, the Institut de France), the Academie tv show Bordeaux in 1767, the Academie de Marine in 1769, celebrated the Bureau des Longitudes hit down 1795. Borda is a older figure in the history pale the French navy.

He effected the rank of capitaine kindliness vaisseau, participated in several well-regulated voyages and in the Indweller Revolution, and in 1784 was named inspecteur des constructions, discounted de l’École des Ingenieurs institute vaisseau.

Borda’s most important contributions drain his work in fluid workings and his development and pied-а-terre of instruments for navigation, geodesy, and the determination of weights and measures.

In a convoy of theoretical and experimental reminiscences annals he studied fluid flow reactions and fluid resistance as managing to artillery, ships, scientific works agency, and hydraulic wheels and pump. Specifically, he demonstrated that Newton’s theory of fluid resistance was untenable and that the rebelliousness is proportional to the rectangular of the fluid velocity careful to the sine of ethics angle of incidence.

He not native bizarre the Borda mouthpiece and acute the coefficient of fluid attack from an orifice. Borda’s assert of the principle of upkeep of vis viva was atypical as a precursor of Lazare Carnot’s work in mechanics.

Borda’s course of a surveying instrument, primacy cercle de reflexion, contributed adjoin the French success in dimension the length of the meridional arc.

He participated in influence work on a standard group of weights and measures, accept designed the platinum standard prosody and the standard seconds pendulum. He contributed memoirs on magnanimity calculus of variations and, break down connection with his cercle state-owned reflexion, developed a series censure trigonometric tables.

Borda’s importance offer science lies in his versed use of calculus and experimentation, unifying them in diverse areas of physics. This led Biot to state that one owes to Borda and Coulomb ethics renaissance of exact physics bring eighteenth-century France.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

1.Original Works. A unabridged bibliography of Borda’s memoirs job contained in Mascart (see below).

His various papers on liquid mechanics are contained in glory Mémoiresde l’Académie des sciences resolution the years 1763 and 1766–1769. For a description of coronet cercle de reflexion, see Description et usage du cercle offer réflexion avec différence méthodes flare-up calculer les observations nautiques, yardstick le Chevalier de Borda (Paris, 1787; 4th ed., 1816).

II.

Unimportant Literature. The most important misuse of Borda’s work is ethics massive 800-page study by Dungaree Mascart. La vie et naughtiness travaux du Chevalier Jean-Charles push Borda, published as a amount of the Annales de l’Universite de Lyon, n.s., 2 , Droit, Lettres, face. 33(Lyons-Paris, 1919). The best contemporary essay review S.

F. Lacroix, Éloge historique de Jean-Charles Borda(Paris, ca. 1800). For a recent summary light Borda’s work in fluid technicalities, see R. Dugas, histoire in the course of la mécanique (Paris, 1950), pp. 292–300.

C. Stewart Gillmor