Saint-Venant's theorem, named for the French engineer and mathematician Adhemar Jean Claude Barre de Saint-Venant, concerns beams of constant cross section under torsion. It states that, among all simply connected cross-sectional shapes of a given area, the circle has the greatest torsional rigidity, a measure of how strongly a shape resists twisting. Saint-Venant conjectured the result in 1856, but a rigorous proof wasn't supplied until 1948, by George Polya, with further proofs given afterward by Harold Davenport and by Endre Makai.
Facts
StatementThe simply connected cross section with maximal torsional rigidity is a circle. 1 Classification
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Entity-backed identity for the statement-form enum value this theorem already carries, resolved to a mathematics concept by an explicit value-to-entity map (phase 3 bucket conversion, docs\design_entity_backed_browse_buckets_20260928.md). The statement-form fact itself stays on the theorem unchanged.
Sources
1. Saint-Venant's theorem - Wikipedia
Introduction, sentence 2
Saint-Venant's theorem states that the simply connected cross section with maximal torsional rigidity is a circle.
Body, paragraph after the torsional rigidity definition
A rigorous proof of this inequality was not given until 1948
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