death_date death_place birth_place awards birth_date image article_title name
12 april 1902 romorantin orléans rumford medal -lrb- 1878 -rrb- 6 march 1841 alfred cornu.jpg marie alfred cornu
 marie alfred cornu
marie alfred cornu

marie alfred cornu -lrb- march 6 , 1841 -- april 12 , 1902 -rrb- was a french physicist .
the french generally refer to him as alfred cornu .
cornu was born at orléans to françois cornu and sophie poinsellier .
he was educated at the École polytechnique and the École des mines .
upon the death of Émile verdet in 1866 , cornu became , in 1867 , verdet 's successor as professor of experimental physics at the École polytechnique , where he remained throughout his life .
although he made various excursions into other branches of physical science , undertaking , for example , with jean-baptistin baille about 1870 a repetition of cavendish 's experiment for determining the gravitational constant `` g '' , his original work was mainly concerned with optics and spectroscopy .
in particular he carried out a classical redetermination of the speed of light by a. h. l. fizeau 's method -lrb- see fizeau-foucault apparatus -rrb- , introducing various improvements in the apparatus , which added greatly to the accuracy of the results .
this achievement won for him , in 1878 , the `` prix lacaze '' and membership of the french academy of sciences -lrb- `` l'académie des sciences '' -rrb- , and the rumford medal of the royal society in england .
in 1892 , he was elected a member of the royal swedish academy of sciences .
in 1896 , he became president of the french academy of sciences .
in 1899 , at the jubilee commemoration of sir george stokes , he was rede lecturer at cambridge , his subject being the wave theory of light and its influence on modern physics ; and on that occasion the honorary degree of d.sc .
was conferred on him by the university .
he died at romorantin on april 12 , 1902 .
the cornu spiral , a graphical device for the computation of light intensities in fresnel 's model of near-field diffraction , is named after him .
the spiral -lrb- or clothoid -rrb- is also used in geometrical road design .
the cornu depolarizer is also named after him .
