Gaspard-Gustave de Coriolis

Gaspard-Gustave de Coriolis was a French mathematician, mechanical engineer and scientist. He is best known for his work on the supplementary forces that are detected in a rotating frame of reference, leading to the Coriolis effect. He was the first to apply the term travail for the transfer of energy by a force acting through a distance, and he prefixed the factor +1⁄2 to Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz's concept of vis viva, thus specifying today's kinetic energy.