Jean Léonard Marie Poiseuille

Jean Léonard Marie Poiseuille was a French physicist and physiologist.

Life

Poiseuille was born and died in Paris. From 1815 to 1816, he studied at the École Polytechnique in Paris, where 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, and invented the U-tube mercury manometer to measure arterial blood pressures in horses and dogs.
In 1838, he experimentally derived, and in 1840 and 1846 formulated and published, Poiseuille's law, 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 poise, the unit of viscosity in the CGS system, was named after him; a proposed SI unit for viscosity, the poiseuille, was also named in his honour.