André-Marie Ampère facts for kids
Quick facts for kids
André-Marie Ampère
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Engraving of André-Marie Ampère
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| Born | 20 January 1775 |
| Died | 10 June 1836 (aged 61) |
| Nationality | French |
| Known for | Ampère's circuital law Ampère's force law Ampère's right hand grip rule Ampèrian loop model Avogadro-Ampère hypothesis Monge–Ampère equation Discovery of fluorine Needle telegraph Solenoid |
| Awards | FRS (1827) |
| Scientific career | |
| Fields | Physics |
| Institutions | École Polytechnique |
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André-Marie Ampère (born January 20, 1775 – died June 10, 1836) was a brilliant French physicist and mathematician. He is known as one of the people who started the science of classical electromagnetism. He even called this new field "electrodynamics."
Ampère also invented many useful things, like the solenoid (a type of coil that creates a magnetic field) and an early electrical telegraph. He taught himself a lot of what he knew. Ampère was a member of the French Academy of Sciences and a professor at important schools like the École Polytechnique.
The unit for measuring electric current in the SI system is called the ampere. It is named after him! His name is also one of the 72 names written on the famous Eiffel Tower in Paris.
Contents
Early Life and Learning
André-Marie Ampère was born on January 20, 1775. His father, Jean-Jacques Ampère, was a successful businessman. André-Marie grew up at his family's home near Lyon, France.
Ampère's father believed in a special way of learning. He let his son learn on his own using the many books in their home library. Young Ampère taught himself by reading important books from the French Enlightenment. These included large encyclopedias and books about nature.
He also learned Latin lessons. This helped him read the works of famous mathematicians like Leonhard Euler. By age 12, Ampère was already teaching himself advanced mathematics. He later said that by age 18, he knew most of what he would ever know about math and science. But he also loved reading about history, poetry, and philosophy.
Growing Up During Change
The French Revolution began when Ampère was a teenager. This was a time of big changes in France. His father started working for the new government.
Sadly, during a difficult time in the Revolution, his father was arrested and passed away in 1793. This was a very hard time for Ampère and his family.
In 1796, Ampère met Julie Carron, and they got married in 1799. He got his first regular job as a mathematics teacher. This helped him support his family. Their first child, Jean-Jacques, was born the next year. Jean-Jacques later became a famous scholar too.
As France changed under Napoleon, Ampère found new chances to succeed. In 1802, he became a professor of physics and chemistry in Bourg-en-Bresse. While there, he studied mathematics and wrote about mathematical probability.
Teaching and Discoveries
After his wife passed away in 1803, Ampère moved to Paris. He started teaching at the new École Polytechnique in 1804. Even without a lot of formal schooling, he became a math professor there in 1809. He also taught philosophy and astronomy at the University of Paris. In 1824, he became a professor of experimental physics at the Collège de France.
In 1814, Ampère was invited to join the French Academy of Sciences. During these years, he studied many different subjects. He wrote papers on math, philosophy, chemistry, and astronomy. This was common for smart people at that time.
Ampère was a religious person. He found comfort in reading the Bible during tough times. He even hosted a young student named Frédéric Ozanam in his home. Ozanam later became a very important figure in charity work.
Amazing Work with Electromagnetism
In September 1820, Ampère's friend François Arago showed the French Academy of Sciences a new discovery. A Danish physicist named Hans Christian Ørsted had found that an electric current could move a magnetic needle.
Ampère was very interested in this. He quickly started working on a math and physics theory to explain how electricity and magnetism were connected. He did more experiments based on Ørsted's work.
Ampère showed that two wires carrying electric currents would either pull towards each other or push away from each other. This depended on whether the currents flowed in the same or opposite directions. This was a huge step in understanding electrodynamics.
He used mathematics to create general laws from his experiments. The most famous of these is Ampère's law. This law explains how two current-carrying wires interact. Ampère also showed how his law connected to Coulomb's law about electric forces. Ampère was very good at doing experiments, which helped make his science strong.
Ampère also thought about what was happening at a tiny level. He imagined "electrodynamic molecules" (which were like an early idea of the electron). He believed these tiny parts were involved in both electricity and magnetism.
In 1827, Ampère published his most important book. It was called Memoir on the Mathematical Theory of Electrodynamic Phenomena, Uniquely Deduced from Experience. This book gave the new science its name, electrodynamics. It is still seen as the founding book for this field.
Because of his amazing work, Ampère was called the "Newton of electricity." He was also made a member of important scientific groups in England and Sweden.
Honors and Legacy
- October 8, 1825: He became a member of the Royal Academy of Science, Letters and Fine Arts of Belgium.
Lasting Impact
In 1881, an international meeting decided that the ampere would be a standard unit for measuring electricity. This was to honor Ampère's huge contributions to electrical science. Other units like the coulomb, volt, ohm, watt, and farad are also named after scientists who lived around the same time.
Ampère's name is one of the 72 names written on the Eiffel Tower. Many streets and squares are named after him. There are also schools, a metro station in Lyon, a type of computer chip (microarchitecture), a mountain on the Moon, and even an electric ferry in Norway named in his honor.
Writings
- Considérations sur la théorie mathématique du jeu, Perisse, Lyon Paris 1802, online lesen im Internet-Archiv
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Partial translations:
- Magie, W.M. (1963). A Source Book in Physics. Harvard: Cambridge MA. pp. 446–460.
- The Tests of Time: Readings in the Development of Physical Theory. Princeton: Princeton University Press. 2003. pp. 157–162. ISBN 978-0691090856..
Complete translations:
- Ampère, André-Marie (2015). André Koch Torres Assis. ed. Ampère's electrodynamics: analysis of the meaning and evolution of Ampère's force between current elements, together with a complete translation of his masterpiece: Theory of electrodynamic phenomena, uniquely deduced from experience. Montreal: Apeiron. ISBN 978-1-987980-03-5. https://www.ifi.unicamp.br/~assis/Amperes-Electrodynamics.pdf.
- Ampère, André-Marie (2015). Mathematical Theory of Electrodynamic Phenomena, Uniquely Derived from Experiments. Michael D. Godfrey, Derek (trans.). https://docs.google.com/file/d/0BzMHTgCmyrNZSVFCZkpXNTMwQU0/edit.
See also
In Spanish: André-Marie Ampère para niños
