Edme Mariotte
(1620-1684)

Edme Mariotte was a French physicist who made developments in dynamics, hydrostatics, optics, and mechanics. He made tests on beams and developed a theory for calculating load-carrying capacity; his theory was an improvement on Galileo’s work, but still not correct.

From Mechanics of Materials, 4th Ed., by J.M. Gere and S.P. Timoshenko, PWS Publishing, 1997, pp. 835-42.