Joseph Valentin Boussinesq

Joseph Valentin Boussinesq was a French mathematician and physicist, born in 1842, who made significant contributions to the theory of hydrodynamics, vibration, light and heat. From 1872 to 1886 he was professor at the Faculty of Sciences of Lille, where he lectured on differential and integral calculus at the Institut industriel du Nord, and from 1896 until his retirement in 1918 he was professor of mechanics at the Faculty of Sciences of Paris. In 1871 he published the first mathematical theory to support John Scott Russell's experimental observation of solitary waves, and in 1877 he introduced the Korteweg and De Vries equation, work that grew into the modern physics of solitons.