Charles-Augustin de Coulomb
July 2026
Who he was
Charles-Augustin de Coulomb (1736–1806) was a French physicist. His 1785 law describing the electrostatic force between charged objects ($F=kq_1q_2/r^2$) was one of the first precisely quantified force laws in physics, established using a torsion balance of his own design.
What he’s known for on this site
Coulomb’s name appears here through the electrostatic repulsion term in the semi-empirical mass formula (protons in a nucleus repel each other via the same force Coulomb characterized) and the Bohr-Wheeler fissionability parameter, which is built directly from the ratio of Coulomb energy to surface energy.
Catalog status: Proven Systems
Coulomb’s law is proven to extremely high precision — the electrostatic foundation of chemistry and much of condensed matter physics.
Mentioned on this site
Where this touches PBT
Paper 13 uses the Coulomb term exactly as standard nuclear physics defines it, as part of the real baseline the paper builds its own additions on top of.