The Baer-Babinet law (or sometimes, the law of Baer) is a concept in geography which states that the process of formation of rivers is influenced by the rotation of the earth. According to the hypothesis, because of the rotation of the earth, erosion occurs mostly on the right banks of rivers in the Northern Hemisphere, and in the Southern Hemisphere on the left banks. The concept was originally introduced by a French physicist Jacques Babinet in 1859 using mathematical deduction and Coriolis force. A more definitive explanation was given by an Estonian scientist Karl Ernst von Baer in 1860.