In 1801, he resumed his investigations once more, but now they are concerned more particularly with magnetism. The first was a theoretical and practical determination of the forces which hold different magnetic needles, magnetized to saturation, in the magnetic meridian. This was followed, in the same year, by a paper which, like its predecessor, was published among the memoirs of the Institute of France, which had replaced the Royal Academy of Sciences, to which body many of Coulomb's papers of the former time had been presented, and in whose publications they originally appeared. This second paper detailed his experiments on the determination of the force of cohesion of fluids and the law of resistance in them, when the movements were very slow.
When the French Institute was organized under Napoleon in 1801, Coulomb was named among its first members. It is believed that he was even chosen to occupy a place in the first government of the state, but a man more interested in politics obtained the place, a fortunate circumstance for science. Coulomb was named, however, one of the inspectors of public instruction, then the highest place in the education department, and he did much to restore to France the educational system that had been destroyed during the Revolution. In this rather trying work he was noted for the kindliness yet firmness of his character, while his absolute fairness and sense of justice were recognized on all sides.
Unfortunately Coulomb was not long spared to continue his work. He took up his experimental and mathematical investigations, on his return to the capital, with great enthusiasm, but his health had been undermined and his work had been rudely interrupted. After 1801, no further paper by him appears to have been published until 1806. This gave the result of different methods employed in order to produce in blades and bars of steel the greatest degree of magnetism. For some time preceding this, in spite of increasing ill-health, he had continued his experiments on the influence of temperature on the magnetism of steel. His work on this subject was not destined to be completed, for not long after passing his seventieth year, in June of this year, his health gave way completely, and he died August 23d, 1806. His final observations were gathered by Biot, carefully preserved, and assigned a place in the volume of Coulomb's Memoirs, issued by the French Physical Society.
Personally, Coulomb was noted for great seriousness of character, though with this was mingled a gentleness of disposition that made for him some cordial friendships among his scientific contemporaries. He had but few friends, but those who were admitted to his intimacy made up by the depth of their affection for the smallness of their number. Even those who had occasion to meet him but once or twice, carried away from their meeting an affectionate remembrance of his kindliness and courtesy and readiness to help wherever he could be of service. He was extremely happy in his family relations, and this proved to be a great source of consolation to him during the years when the progress of the French Revolution took him away from science and made him almost despair of his country.
It is not surprising that Biot, the great French physicist, in writing of Coulomb in his Mélanges Scientifiques et Littéraires, Vol. III. (Paris, 1858), should have held Coulomb up as a model of the simple, earnest, helpful life and as a man of the most exemplary character. He says: "Coulomb lived among the men of his time in patience and charity. He was distinguished among them mainly by his separation from their passions and their errors, and he always maintained himself calm, firm and dignified in se totus teres atque rotundus, as Horace says, a complete, perfect and well-rounded character." Few men have deserved so noble a eulogy as this, written nearly fifty years after his death, by one who had known Coulomb himself and his contemporaries well; it has none of the exaggeration of a funeral panegyric, and is evidently founded on details of knowledge with regard to the great electrician which had become a tradition among French scientists, and which Biot has forever crystallized into the history of science by his emphatic expression.
One could scarcely wish for a better epitaph than Biot's summing up of Coulomb's personal character: "All those who knew Coulomb know how the gravity of his character was tempered by the sweetness of his disposition, and those who had the happiness to meet him at their entrance into a scientific career have kept the most tender remembrance of his gentle good-heartedness."
FOOTNOTES:
[21] Collection de Memoires relatifs à La Physique Publiés Par la Société Française de Physique. Tome I., Mémoires de Coulomb. Paris. Gauthier-Villars, Imprimeur-Libraire Du Bureau des Longitudes, de L'École Polytechnique, Quai des Augustins, 55, 1884.
[22] Catholic Churchmen in Science, the Dolphin Press, Philadelphia, 1906.