Jean-Charles de Borda
DOI: 10.1063/PT.5.030957
It’s the birthday of Jean-Charles de Borda, who was born in 1733 in Dax, France. Borda studied mathematics and became a military engineer. He then joined the French navy, for whom he fought in the American Revolution and developed new mathematical tools for navigation. Already a member of the French Academy of Sciences by the age of 31, Borda participated in the measurement of the meter and led the construction of the first standard meter stick. Borda’s name lives on in the field of fluid dynamics. With Lazare Carnot he devised an empirical expression, the Borda-Carnot equation, for the mechanical energy lost when a fluid flowing through a pipe encounters a sudden expansion in the pipe’s width. Five French naval ships have been named after Borda.
Date in History: 4 May 1733
