Correspondence between de Saint-Venant and Boussinesq. 4: The role of Frédéric Reech

Abstract

Frédéric Reech was a notable French naval engineer, whose name is particularly known for his role in the theory of mechanical similitude. Based on a submission of a paper to the Academy of Sciences, Paris, de Saint-Venant (dSV) had to deal with it, given his role as president of the Mechanics Section. Part 2 of this work deals with the exchange of letters between dSV and Boussinesq on the theory of permanent waves, the topic addressed by Reech in his submission. Given the relevance of Reech in hydraulic modeling, and the poor knowledge on both his career and his biography, part 1 deals with a hardly known publication of Moritz Weber, the namesake of the Froude number in 1919. He changed this later into the Reech number, based on detailed researches on Reech’s career as a naval engineer, professor at the Marine School of Lorient, and his writings. This paper therefore both accounts for the Correspondence and the excellent work of Weber, whose name is kept in the Weber number for effects of capillarity.

Keywords

• Academy of Sciences
• Biography
• History of hydraulics
• Periodic waves
• Shallow water equations