PONCIN

FRANCE (see also List of Individuals)

\

1.10.1904 Poitiers/F - 22.2.1994 Paris/F

\

Henri Poncin was a research assistant at the technical direction of the Ministry of Aviation from 1930 to 1933. After having been a Lecturer for 2 years he was appointed professor in 1935, and director in 1945 of the Institut de Mécanique et d'Aéronautique until 1961. In parallel Poncin was from 1948 a professor, and from 1968 the director of the Laboratoire de Recherches sur les Transfers Thermiques, at University of Paris. From the 1970s he was largely involved in the French nuclear power program. He was president of Société Française des Thermiciens in 1970. Poncin was awarded Prix Henri de Parville in 1936, Prix Montyon in 1946 from Académie des Sciences, Paris; he was a Cavalier of Légion d'Honneur and a Commandeur des Palmes Académiques.

\

Poncin made his PhD thesis with Paul Appell (1855-1930) on fluid motion in a vertical plane. In the 1930s he continued works presented by Joseph Boussinesq (1842-1929) on weir flow. In the 1940s his main interest centered in discontinuous flows and in cavities. Then he changed his field by becoming interest in the relation of fluid motion and thermodynamics. After having worked on the characteristics of shock waves, he added to purely hydrodynamic considerations also those that are required with energy conservation. Poncin thus was at the front of French high-speed gas dynamics, together with Edmond Brun (1898-1979). Poncin presented some research on temperature measurement methods and the instrumentation required for such observations.

\

_{Anonymous (1948). Henri Poncin. Annales de l'Université de Paris 18: 273-276. P}

_{Fouquet, J. de (1998). 50 ans d'ENSMA. L'Actualité Poitou-Charentes, hors série. P}

_{Poggendorff, J.C. (1898). Poncin, Henri. Biographisch-Literarisches Handwörterbuch 6: 2050; 7b: 4093-4094. Akademie-Verlag: Berlin, with bibliography.}

_{Poncin, D. (2004). Henri Poncin. Personal communication. P}

_{Poncin, H. (1932). Recherches sur le mouvement d'un fluide pesant dans un plan vertical. Publications Scientifiques et Techniques du Ministère de l'Air 16. Gauthier-Villars: Paris. Poncin, H. (1934). Détermination des éléments d'un écoulement en déversoir. La Revue Mécanique (239): 560-572.}

_{Poncin, H. (1973). Exposées sur les différentes méthodes de mesure des températures de surface. Cahiers de la thermique, Série A 3. Paris.}

_{Poncin, H. (1978). Thermocinétique impulsionelle et mesure de la diffusivité. Chiron: Paris.}