Minard

Minard is a surname of French origin and can also refer to a place name in Brittany, France. The most notable bearer is Charles Joseph Minard (1781–1870), a French civil engineer and cartographer who became famous for his flow diagram illustrating Napoleon Bonaparte’s 1812 Russian campaign. Minard’s diagram encodes multiple variables—the size of the army, its geographic route, the timing of events, and temperature—into a single, flowing graphic that is widely cited as a classic example of effective data visualization. He worked for the Ponts et Chaussées, contributing to 19th-century public works in France and producing graphical representations of statistical information.

Minard is also the name of a small commune in the Morbihan department of Brittany, France. The toponym persists in local geography as an example of how family names and places share origins in French history and settlement.

Today, the Minard diagram is frequently referenced in studies of information design and data visualization, praised for its integrative approach to presenting complex, multivariate data in a coherent, accessible form. It is often cited in academic and professional contexts as an influential early model of effective graphical storytelling.