Many probably often heard the word "ampere", instantly referring this concept to physics. Ampere is a unit of measure of electric current. But have you ever wondered why and in whose honor the unit of current was named? Today we will present information about the biography of Andre Marie Ampère, an outstanding physicist and brilliant scientist, as well as his contribution to science, personal life, family and career.
Basic information from the life of a scientist
A brief biography of Andre Marie Ampère says that he was a French physicist and one of the founders of electrodynamics. He was also a recognized mathematician, interested in other fields of science, such as history, philosophy and the natural sciences. Born in the midst of the French Enlightenment, he grew up in an intellectually stimulating atmosphere. France of his youth was marked by widespread events in the field of science and art, and the French Revolution, which began when he was a young man, also had a significant influence in shaping his future life.
The son of a prosperous entrepreneur, he was inspired to educate, search for himself and gain knowledge from an early youth, was fond of mathematics and the sciences bordering on it. As a brilliant scientist with extensive and valuable knowledge in various fields, he also taught philosophy and astronomy at the University of Paris.
Interests
Along with his academic career, Ampère was also engaged in scientific experiments in various fields and was particularly intrigued by the work of Hans Christian Oersted, who discovered the connection between electricity and magnetism. Ampereâs biography reflects how much he influenced science. Having become a follower of Oersted, through diligent laboratory activities, Ampère made several more discoveries in this field that made a huge contribution to the formation of electromagnetism and electrodynamics as a science. Ampere is considered one of the founders of this branch of theoretical physics. Ampereâs biography will be summarized in this article.
Family Andre Marie
Ampere was born on January 20, 1775 in the family of Jean-Jacques Ampère and Jeanne Antoinette Desutiers-Sarsi Ampère. Jean-Jacques was a successful entrepreneur. Andre Ampere had two sisters.
The father of the scientist was a connoisseur of the philosophy of Jean-Jacques Rousseau, who believed that young boys should avoid formal training and should instead "learn from the environment." Thus, he did not send his son to school and instead allowed him to educate himself with books in his well-stocked library.
As a child, Ampere was very inquisitive, which was good soil for the development of his further insatiable thirst for knowledge. Under the guidance of his father, he read books on mathematics, history, philosophy and the natural sciences, as well as poetry. Along with his interest in science, he was also interested in the Catholic faith, since his mother was a very devout woman.
He was especially passionate about mathematics and began to seriously study this subject when he was 13 years old. His father encouraged his intellectual studies in every possible way, found specialized books on this subject for his son, and arranged for him to receive mathematics lessons from Abbot Daburon. At this time, Andre began to study physics.
The French Revolution began in 1789, when Andre was 14. His father was called up for public service by the government that recently came to power and was sent to a small town near Lyon.
The Ampere family suffered a tragedy when one of his sisters died in 1792. Another misfortune concerning his family occurred when the Jacobin faction seized control of the revolutionary government in 1792 and guillotined Father Andre in November 1793. Experiencing these terrible losses, he left his studies for a year. Career Ampère began working as a private teacher of mathematics in Lyon in 1797. He turned out to be an excellent teacher, and the students began to flock quickly to him, in order to learn and become a follower of a talented teacher. His success as a teacher attracted the attention of Lyon's intellectuals to Ampere - they were struck by the baggage of knowledge of the young man.
Career
In 1799, he found a permanent job as a teacher of mathematics. For several years he was appointed professor of physics and chemistry at the Central School in Burg-en-Bresse in 1802. During this time, Andre also studied mathematics and prepared for publication a work entitled "Studies of the mathematical theory of games", 1802.
Ampere became a teacher at the new, newly established Polytechnic School in 1804. In addition to numerous talents in various fields, he also had a teaching gift. In this regard, Andre became a professor of mathematics at school in 1809, despite the lack of basic education in the broad sense of the concept (after all, he studied individually). Ampere was elected to the French Academy of Sciences in 1814. Ampereâs biography shows us that hard work is always rewarded.
He also did research along with his academic career and taught disciplines such as philosophy and astronomy at the University of Paris in 1819-20.
Ampere was very impressed with Oersted's discoveries regarding electromagnetism, so he took over the research initiative and began to work on further discoveries. After careful experiments, Ampere showed that two parallel wires carrying electric currents attract or repel each other, depending on whether currents flow in the same or opposite direction.
Gifted by nature, having a lot of knowledge and skills in the field of exact sciences, Ampere used mathematics in the synthesis of physical laws from experimental results. After many years of intensive research and experimentation, Ampère published A Reflection on the Mathematical Theory of Electrodynamic Phenomena Uniquely Derived from Experiment in 1827. A new science, âelectrodynamicsâ, was called such and generalized in this work, which became known as its founding treatise.
This is a short biography of Andre Ampère.
Main works
The scientist came up with a law (named after him), which states that the mutual action of two lengths of a conductive wire is proportional to their lengths and the intensity of their currents.
Ampere invented the astatic needle, an almost paramount component of the modern astatic galvanometer.
Awards and Achievements
In 1827, Amper became a member of the Royal Society and a member of the Royal Academy of Sciences in Sweden in 1828. But this is only a drop in the ocean. The great scientist made an invaluable contribution to the development of science.
Personal life and heritage
Andre Marie Ampère married Catherine-Antoinette Carron in 1799. Their son was born a year later, they named him after his grandfather â Jean-Jacques.
However, a tragedy occurred in a young family - the scientist's wife fell ill with cancer and died in 1803.
Andre was married to Jeanne-Francoise Poto in 1806. This alliance seemed to many unsuccessful from the very beginning. And indeed, the couple broke up shortly after the birth of their daughter.
Ampère died in the city of Marseille on June 10, 1836 from pneumonia. Ampereâs biography is rather tragic when considering areas of life that are not related to his professional activities.
A brief biography of Andre Ampère says that his name is one of 72 names recorded on the Eiffel Tower.
Great achievements
The life of the greatest scientist is closely connected with scientific activity. Impromptu, we consider 5 major events in the biography of Andre Marie Ampère, concerning his scientific activities.
- Discovery regarding fluoride. In 1810, Andre-Marie Ampère suggested that hydrofluoric acid is a compound of hydrogen and an unknown element, the properties of which, he said, were similar to chlorine. He coined the term âfluorineâ for this element, suggesting that F could be insulated by electrolysis. 76 years later, the French chemist Henri Moisin finally isolated fluorine (he did this by electrolysis at the suggestion of Ampere.
- He proposed his own version of the identification of elements. In 1816, Ampere proposed to indicate the chemical elements in accordance with their properties. Only 48 elements were known at that time, and Andre tried to put them in 15 groups. He successfully grouped alkali metals, alkaline earth metals and halogens. 53 years after the scientistâs attempt to organize the elements, the Russian chemist Dmitry Mendeleev published his famous periodic table.
- He came up with the "rule of the right hand." Andre-Marie Ampère developed a rule known as the right-hand rule to determine the direction of deviation of the compass needle relative to the direction in which electric current flowed along the wire. In this rule, if it is assumed that the right hand of the observer captures the wire through which the current flows, with a thumb directed along the wire in the direction of the current. Then, fingers twisting around the wire indicate the direction in which the compass needle will deviate. Ampere's rule is still used by students to calculate the direction of magnetic lines of force.
- Oersted experimentally pointed out the connection between electricity and magnetism in 1820. After a short time, Andre-Marie Ampère discovered that two parallel wires with electric current repel or attract each other. It depends on whether their direction coincides or differs, respectively. Thus, Ampere first showed that magnetic attraction and repulsion can be obtained without the use of magnets.
- Andre-Marie Ampere applied mathematics to his experiments with electromagnetism to formulate physical laws. The most important of these, the Ampere force law (formulated in 1823), shows that the occurrence of attraction or repulsion between two wires carrying currents directly depends on the length and intensity of the current passing through them. The physical origin of this force is that each wire generates a magnetic field.
Cybernetics
There are many definitions of cybernetics. Norbert Wiener, a mathematician, engineer and social philosopher, coined the word "cybernetics" derived from the Greek language, means "helmsman." He defined it as the science of the connection and control of living organisms and machines. Ampère, even before Wiener, called cybernetics the science of government. An important element of this science, Andre called the industry, which should study the laws, their origin and impact on society.
We reviewed the biography of Marie Ampere.