Jean Léonard Marie Poiseuille

Jean Léonard Marie Poiseuille
Born	22 April 1797 Paris
Died	26 December 1869 (aged 72) Paris
Nationality	French
Fields	physicist and physiologist
Alma mater	École Polytechnique
Known for	Poiseuille's law

Jean Léonard Marie Poiseuille^{[lower-alpha 1]} (French: [pwazœj]; 22 April 1797 – 26 December 1869) was a French physicist and physiologist.

Poiseuille was born in Paris, France, and he died there on 26 December 1869.

Fluid flow

From 1815 to 1816 he studied at the École Polytechnique in Paris. He was trained in physics and mathematics. In 1828 he earned his D.Sc. degree with a dissertation entitled Recherches sur la force du coeur aortique. He was interested in the flow of human blood in narrow tubes.

In 1838 he experimentally derived, and in 1840 and 1846 formulated and published, Poiseuille's law (now commonly known as the Hagen–Poiseuille equation, crediting Gotthilf Hagen as well), which applies to laminar flow that is, non-turbulent flow of liquids through pipes of uniform section, such as blood flow in capillaries and veins.

The equation is

In standard fluid dynamics notation:^[1][2]

$\Delta P = \frac{8 \mu L Q}{ \pi r^4}$

or

$\Delta P = \frac{128 \mu L Q}{ \pi d^4}$

or

$\Delta P = \frac{32 \mu L v}{ \ d^2}$

where:

$\Delta P$ is the pressure loss

$L$ is the length of pipe

$\mu$ is the dynamic viscosity

$Q$ is the volumetric flow rate

$r$ is the radius

$d$ is the diameter

$\pi$ is the mathematical constant Pi

$v$ is the velocity

The poise, the unit of viscosity in the CGS system, was named after him. Attempts to introduce "Poiseuille" as the name of the SI unit Pa·s had little success.

Notes

1. Some sources (including editions of Encyclopedia Britannica from at least 1911) give Poiseuille's full name as Jean Louis Marie Poiseuille. This appears to be a mistake, propagated from Larousse's Grand dictionnaire universel du XIXe siècle, vol 12, p. 1271 (1874)

Further reading

• Brillouin, Marcel (1930). "Jean Leonard Marie Poiseuille". Journal of Rheology 1: 345. Bibcode:1930JRheo...1..345B. doi:10.1122/1.2116329.
• Pfitzner, J (1976), "Poiseuille and his law.", Anaesthesia (Mar 1976) 31 (2), pp. 273–5, doi:10.1111/j.1365-2044.1976.tb11804.x, PMID 779509 (Subscription required)
• Sutera, Salvatore P.; Skalak, Richard (1993). "The History of Poiseuille's Law". Annual Review of Fluid Mechanics 25: 1–19. Bibcode:1993AnRFM..25....1S. doi:10.1146/annurev.fl.25.010193.000245.

References

1. Kirby, B.J. (2010). Micro- and Nanoscale Fluid Mechanics: Transport in Microfluidic Devices. Cambridge University Press. ISBN 978-0-521-11903-0.
2. Bruus, H. (2007). Theoretical Microfluidics.