Thévenin's theorem
Teorema de Thévenin
- Date
- 1853-1883 · confidence high
- Place
- Paris, France
- Credited to
- Léon Charles Thévenin; formulated earlier by Hermann von Helmholtz (1853)
- Field
- Matter & energy
⚠️ Disputed: the sources disagree.
What was discovered
Working for the French Post and Telegraph service, Thévenin published in 1883 the theorem that allows any linear electrical network seen from two terminals to be replaced by a single voltage source with a series resistance. Helmholtz had independently reached the same result thirty years earlier, in 1853, while studying the electromotive properties of animal tissue.
Helmholtz obtained the same result in 1853, thirty years before Thévenin, though from a more physics-oriented perspective than electrical engineering; the theorem is often attributed to both.
What it led to
- Standard simplification of electrical networks in engineering
- Dual Norton's theorem
Built on
- Kirchhoff's laws on conducting systems (1848)