Carte figurative des pertes … (detail) (source: standford.edu)

Charles Joseph Minard (1781 – 1870) was a French civil engineer who is noted for his inventions in the field of information graphics. Born in Dijon, Minard studied mathematics and science at the École Polytechnique, then civil engineering at École nationale des ponts et chaussées.

Minard was a pioneer of the use of graphics in engineering and statistics. He is most famous for his Carte figurative des pertes successives en hommes de l’Armée Française dans la campagne de Russie 1812-1813, a flow map published in 1869 on the subject of Napoleon’s disastrous Russian campaign of 1812. Some critics have called possibly the best statistical graphic ever drawn.