Charles-Augustin de Coulomb
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The French engineer who turned the torsion balance into an instrument for measuring charge, and proved the electric force follows an inverse square law.
Before him there were devices to generate, store and detect static electricity and no easy way to say how much. He did not invent the balance - John Michell had used a similar one for gravity - but he was the first to point it at charge, and measurement is what turned electricity from a phenomenon people demonstrated into a quantity people could reason about. The field became a science when it acquired a number.
Also known as: coulomb, coulomb's law, torsion balance