Franz Reuleaux

Franz Reuleaux was a German mechanical engineer who lived from 1829 to 1905 and is often called the father of kinematics. Born in Eschweiler, then part of Prussia, into a family of mechanical engineers, he trained at the Karlsruhe Polytechnic School and studied at the universities of Berlin and Bonn. After a period in the family business he became a professor at the Swiss Federal Institute in Zurich, and in 1879 he became rector of the Royal Technical Academy at Berlin-Charlottenburg. He argued that machines can be analysed as chains of elementary links joined in kinematic pairs, devised a compact symbolic notation to classify mechanisms, and directed the making of more than 300 models of simple mechanisms for teaching. He chaired the German judging panel at the 1876 Philadelphia world fair, where his blunt verdict on German goods shook German industry. The Reuleaux triangle, a curve of constant width, is the form most often linked with his name.