2-65. Paul Vieille

Paul Vieille (1854–1934) was the fourth of seven children in the family of Angèle Guénot and Jules Vieille, a graduate of the École normale supérieure who taught mathématiques spéciales in Paris, and was later a rector in the secondary school system. Paul was a classmate of Henri Poincaré at the École polytechnique (1873–1875), who joined the Corps des poudres. From 1885 to 1902, he was a répétiteur in physics at the École polytechnique. When his former professor Alfred Cornu died in 1902, Vieille was named to replace him, but held the chair only for one year, succeeding Alfred Potier in 1904 as examinateur in physics, a position he held until 1913. At the Paris Academy of Science Vieille was awarded the Montyon Prize in 1887, and the Le Conte Prize in 1889, and was elected to the mechanics section in 1904 (Institut de France, 1968, 553).

Paul Vieille was known for his invention in 1884 of smokeless gunpowder, known as “poudre B” or “poudre blanche”. He performed research on the performance of explosives, and headed the Laboratoire central des poudres et salpêtres.

The context of Vieille’s letter to Poincaré is the latter’s direction of a special commission, the “Scientific Commission for Study of Military Explosives”. Armand Fallières, president of the French Republic, named Poincaré to preside this new commission on 6 April, 1907. The principle circumstance of the creation of the commission is the catastrophic explosion of the French battleship Iéna in the port of Toulon on 12 March 1896.

Time-stamp: "17.11.2023 23:42"

Notes

• 1 For an example of Vieille’s research, see Vieille (1890). See also Vieille’s Notice sur les travaux scientifique (Vieille, 1896, 1904).
• 2 For an in-depth study of the history of the commission, see Patrice Bret (2023).