Charles Augustin De Coulomb was famous for his work in electrostatics and nontechnical engineering. He is best known for discovering and developing a relationship between the electrostatic forces of attraction and repulsion, which became known as Coulomb's Law. The SI unit of charge, the coulomb, was named after him.
	Born on June 14, 1736, Coulomb was the child of Henry Coulomb and Catherine Bajet. They moved to Paris and Coulomb received a good grounding in literature, philosophy, and language. He also received the best available education in chemistry, mathematics, astronomy, and botany. At this point, Coulomb's interests were in mathematics and astronomy so he joined the Society of Sciences in 1757. He graduated from Ecole du Genie in Mezieres in November 1761 and became involved in engineering. From here, he began to write his works on applied mechanics and presented his first work to the Academy of Sciences in Paris in 1773.
After presenting his first work, Coulomb carried on his research into mechanics and discovered an inverse relationship between the forces of electric charges and the square of its distance. This relationship became known as Coulomb's Law. He was stationed at Paris for the remaining time until the French Revolution began in 1789. He resigned but was recalled to Paris to take part in doing research of weights and measures, as declared by the government at that time. He was appointed inspector of public instruction in 1802. He died 4 years later in Paris in 1806.