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Romanian physicist Dignified, discreet, modest, of the utmost fairness and accuracy that contests the beat of the clock, this is how his students reminded Constantin Miculescu, founder of Physics School in Bucharest. The physicist Cristea Musceleanu who was his student (and later faculty colleague), used to tell that when the pendulum in the amphitheater on the second floor of the Sciences Faculty began to beat eleven o'clock, the door opened and Professor Miculescu appeared. When he heard the eleventh stroke, he began his lesson. "When the pendulum began to beat at 12, the teacher used to say the last words of the conclusion of the day’s course." This accuracy was not at all an external feature of the magister. As it will be seen, the most significant scientific achievements of this great scientist are into the same exemplary accuracy. The son of a peasant from Crevenicu (County Teleorman), who was known as a good manager, Constantin Miculescu was taught at home with the order and conscientiousness. He was outstanding in the primary school then top pupil at "Matei Basarab" High school in Bucharest (colleague and friend of Gheorghe Marinescu, future founder of the Romanian school of neurology). At the Faculty of Science, Department of Physics and Mathematics, he enjoyed the appreciation of some brilliant teachers, such as Spiru Haret, Marin Alexe, Emanuel Bacaloglu. The later supported him to obtain a scholarship for the study of physics, under a special circumstance. Young Constantin Miculescu was concerned that the scholarship would not be assigned to him as he attended mathematics, but the old teacher reassured him, saying: "Much better that you are a computer. Physics is a mathematical science. Don’t be afraid, you will go to Paris. Just hurry to come back because I am tired". And Constantin Miculescu, "the computer", as baptized by his master, left for the French capital in 1886. His doctoral thesis (1891), which he prepared at the Physics Laboratory of Sorbonne, emphasized the sense of mathematical precision, as well as inventiveness. The great physicist James Prescott Joule, the multilateral discoverer, was the first to determine the "mechanical equivalent of a calorie", a fundamental physical constant, especially in thermodynamics. But his determination, and others calculated by great physicists, gave inaccurate results, with differences of up to 20% between each other, and therefore unusable in practice. Constantin Miculescu made an original construction of a calorimeter, which measured through a personal procedure, the most accurate mechanical equivalent of calorie, J = 4.1857, which could be included in the international constant tables and used practically. When, in 1950, after nearly six decades, the International Committee of Weights and Measures established the final value, the correction affected only the fourth decimal (4.1855 instead of 4.1857). Constantin Miculescu's famous experience from 1891 is still currently cited not only in physics treaties, but also in school textbooks around the world, many of them presenting the sketch of his apparatus too. Returned home in the very year of his thesis, when Emil Bacaloglu died, Constantin Miculescu was called to replace Bacaloglu at the Department of Physics, University of Bucharest (now University of Molecular Physics, Optics and Acoustics), where he taught from 1891 until 1935, so 46 years, period during which he founded the physics school in Bucharest. Physicist Eugene Angelescu remembers him as "tall, straight and sharp. Wonderful experiences, rigorous demonstrations, impeccable exposure characterized Constantin Miculescu". And here, in the university laboratory, even when the requirements of national culture led him to move the center of gravity of the research activity toward work teaching (he taught at several higher education institutions, he was general education inspector, etc.), his scientific works were carried out again into increasing the degree of precision. He developed a method for measuring the internal diameter of capillary tubes (very narrow), created a very accurate method for measuring the refractive index of a solid body prism-shaped with a microscope, developed an acoustic method to determine the coefficient of elasticity of the bodies, etc. In 1909, he was elected at a meeting in London as Member of the International Committee for the Establishment of Constants. He was the first Romanian physicist who became world famous with an important contribution- fundamental to modern thermodynamics. A Romanian Academy Award bears today his name and his bust by the sculptor Cornel Medrea is exhibited within the University of Bucharest. |
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variant spelling: Miculescu, Constantin |
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