The “Miculescu Constant”, An Eloquent Proof Of Deep Experimental Statistical Knowledge In Late 19th Century Romania

This paper is actually a tribute to national experimental statistics as well as its personalities, among whom the late Professor Constantin Miculescu is a special representative, who eventually became the founder of the national school of experimental physics, and also had outstanding international scientific contributions to the equivalences between mechanical and thermal phenomena. It was from this very rigorous statistical approach to the experiments that the famous constant that bears his name was born. Nearly 125 years afterwards, this article examines, through detailed descriptive statistical analysis, all the 31 experimental values that support the arguments in the physicist’s doctoral thesis, defended in Paris, which provided the best precision determination of the mechanical equivalent of the calorie. The present paper represents a pretext to reveal, alongside Constantin Miculescu’s certainties related to his approximation, estimated to the third decimal, the founding of a school of experimental statistics focused on rigor and depth of statistical knowledge. Essentially, his statistical experimental thought is thus remembered and proved anew as an almost flawless one, which has a strength of anticipation of its scientific importance at least one or two generations ahead of other similar approaches in Romanian research.