Antoine Magnan

Antoine Magnan
Born (1881-06-13)13 June 1881
Paris, France
Died 5 March 1938(1938-03-05) (aged 56)
Nationality French
Fields Zoology, Aeronautics
Institutions Collège de France
Ecole pratique des Hautes Etudes
Known for Suggesting insect flight was impossible

Antoine Magnan (13 June 1881 – 5 March 1938)[1] was a French zoologist and aeronautical engineer who studied the flight of insects and birds for possible lessons to apply to powered flight. He is best known for a remark in his 1934 book Le Vol des Insectes ("Insect Flight") that insect flight was impossible.

Life and work

Magnan was born in the central 7th arrondissement of Paris on 13 June 1881.[1] He qualified as a doctor of medicine and of science, and received the diploma of superior studies in zoology. He became a professor of animal mechanics applied to aviation at the Collège de France (from 1929 to 1938),[2] and the director of the experimental morphology laboratory and the aviation laboratory at the École pratique des hautes études in Paris. He was responsible to the ministries of Education, Agriculture and the Interior.[1]

Insect flight

Bumblebee in flight, although Magnan's 1934 Le Vol des Insectes suggested this was impossible
Further information: bumblebee and insect flight

The following passage appears in the introduction to Le Vol des Insectes:[3]

Tout d'abord poussé par ce qui se fait en aviation, j'ai appliqué aux insectes les lois de la résistance de l'air, et je suis arrivé avec M. Sainte-Laguë à cette conclusion que leur vol est impossible.

This translates to:

First prompted by what is done in aviation, I applied the laws of air resistance to insects, and I arrived, with Mr. Sainte-Laguë, at this conclusion that their flight is impossible.

Magnan refers to his assistant, the mathematician and engineer André Sainte-Laguë as the source of the calculations mentioned.[4][5][6]

Works

References

  1. 1 2 3 "Antoine Magnan (1881-1938)". Bibliotheque Nationale de France. Retrieved 21 February 2015.
  2. "Annuaire du College de France 2007-2008" (PDF). College de France. p. 20.
  3. Magnan, Antoine (1934). Le Vol des Insectes. Hermann.
  4. "The bumblebee story can be traced back to a 1934 book by entomologist Antoine Magnan, who refers to a calculation by his assistant André Sainte-Laguë, who was an engineer. The conclusion was presumably based on the fact that the maximum possible lift produced by aircraft wings as small as a bumblebee's wings and traveling as slowly as a bee in flight would be much less than the weight of a bee."Dickinson, M (2001). "Solving the mystery of insect flight". Scientific American. 284 (6): 48–57. doi:10.1038/scientificamerican0601-48. PMID 11396342.
  5. Jay Ingram (2001). The Barmaid's Brain. Aurum Press. pp. 91–92. ISBN 1-85410-633-3.
  6. Dickinson, Michael (August 2001). "Le vol des insectes". Pour la Science. Retrieved 21 February 2015.
This article is issued from Wikipedia - version of the 11/5/2016. The text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution/Share Alike but additional terms may apply for the media files.