Biography

 

Born in 1804 in Piedmont, then under French administration, Arsène Jules Emile Juvénal Dupuit, known as Jules Dupuit, entered the Ecole Polytechnique in 1822 and Ecole des Ponts et Chaussées in 1824.As an ordinary engineer in Le Mans in 1827, he was recognised by his peers, who included Coriolis, for having carried out the first large-scale experiments on the influence of wheel diameter on vehicle propulsion and on road friction.He found that the intensity of friction was inversely proportional to the square of the wheel’s radius, contradicting Charles Coulomb’s 1781 results, and maintained a polemic with Arthur Morin on this question.He argued for freedom of the road and his 1839 recommendations were adopted by the act of May 30, 1851. In 1844, he published his most famous essay: “On the measurement of the utility of public works”, at the same time as being appointed to head the Department of Maine-et-Loire.There, he directed the construction of major engineering works, including Ponts-de-Cé on the Loire in 1849, for which he developed a method for removing construction supports with jacks.Having witnessed the Loire in flood, he studied the movement of the running waters and the way they flowed across permeable ground, using this to introduce bring a new source of drinking water to Angers by means of a filtration gallery in the river’s alluvial deposits.In 1850, he took charge of the Municipal Department of Paris, where he was primarily responsible for the water supply and sewerage until 1855. This was also the period when he joined the Political Economy Society and developed a whole literature focusing on free trade which, in 1861, led to his publication of “Commercial Freedom, its Principle and Consequences”.From 1855 to 1866, he was a member of the Ponts et Chaussées General Council and took a leading role in economics, delivering multiple papers to the Political Economy Society, the Social Economy Society and the Paris Statistical Society.He died in service in 1866.

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