André-Marie Ampere
Source: Wikipedia
Early life
André-Marie
Ampère was born on 20 January 1774 to Jean-Jacques Ampère, a prosperous
businessman, and Jeanne Antoinette Desutières-Sarcey Ampère, during the height
of the French Enlightenment. He
spent his childhood and adolescence at the family property at Poleymieux-au-Mont-d'Or near
Lyon.[3]
Jean-Jacques Ampère, a successful merchant, was an admirer of the philosophy of
Jean-Jacques Rousseau, whose
theories of education (as outlined in his treatise Émile) were the basis of
Ampère's education. Rousseau believed that young boys should avoid formal
schooling and pursue instead an "education direct from nature."
Ampère's father actualized this ideal by allowing his son to educate himself
within the walls of his well-stocked library. French Enlightenment masterpieces
such as Georges-Louis Leclerc, comte
de Buffon's Histoire naturelle, générale et particulière
(begun in 1749) and Denis Diderot and Jean le Rond d'Alembert's Encyclopédie
(volumes added between 1751 and 1772) thus became Ampère's schoolmasters.[citation
needed] The
young Ampère, however, soon resumed his Latin lessons,
which enabled him to master the works of Leonhard Euler and Daniel Bernoulli.[4]
French Revolution
In
addition, Ampère used his access to the latest books to begin teaching himself
advanced mathematics at age 12. In later life Ampère claimed that he knew as
much about mathematics and science when he was eighteen as ever he knew, but as
a polymath, his
reading embraced history, travels, poetry, philosophy, and the natural sciences.[4] His
mother was a devout Catholic, so Ampère was also initiated into the Catholic faith along
with Enlightenment science. The French Revolution
(1789–99) that began during his youth was also influential: Ampère's father was
called into public service by the
new revolutionary government,[5]
becoming a justice of the peace in a small town near Lyon. When the Jacobin faction
seized control of the Revolutionary government in 1792, his father Jean-Jacques
Ampère resisted the new political tides, and he was guillotined on 24
November 1793, as part of the Jacobin purges of the
period.
In
1796 Ampère met Julie Carron, and in 1799 they were married. André-Marie Ampère
took his first regular job in 1799 as a mathematics
teacher, which gave him the financial security to marry Carron and father his
first child, Jean-Jacques (named after his
father), the next year. (Jean-Jacques Ampère eventually achieved his own fame
as a scholar of languages.) Ampère's maturation corresponded with the
transition to the Napoleonic regime in
France, and the young father and teacher found new opportunities for success
within the technocratic structures favoured by the new French First Consul. In
1802 Ampère was appointed a professor of physics and chemistry at the
École Centrale in Bourg-en-Bresse,
leaving his ailing wife and infant son Jean-Jacques Antoine Ampère in
Lyon. He used his time in Bourg to research mathematics, producing Considérations
sur la théorie mathématique de jeu (1802; "Considerations on the
Mathematical Theory of Games"), a treatise on mathematical probability that he sent to
the Paris Academy of Sciences in
1803.
Teaching career
Essai sur la
philosophie des sciences
After
the death of his wife in July 1803, Ampère moved to Paris, where
he began a tutoring post at the new École Polytechnique in 1804. Despite
his lack of formal qualifications, Ampère was appointed a professor of
mathematics at the school in 1809. As well as holding positions at this school
until 1828, in 1819 and 1820 Ampère offered courses in philosophy and astronomy,
respectively, at the University of Paris, and in 1824 he
was elected to the prestigious chair in experimental physics at the Collège de France. In 1814 Ampère was invited to join
the class of mathematicians in the new Institut Impérial, the umbrella
under which the reformed state Academy of Sciences would sit.
Ampère
engaged in a diverse array of scientific inquiries during the years leading up
to his election to the academy—writing papers and engaging in topics from
mathematics and philosophy to chemistry and astronomy, which was customary
among the leading scientific intellectuals of the day. Ampère claimed that
"at eighteen years he found three culminating points in his life, his First Communion, the
reading of Antoine Leonard Thomas's "Eulogy of Descartes", and the Taking of the Bastille. On the
day of his wife's death he wrote two verses from the Psalms, and
the prayer, 'O Lord, God of Mercy, unite me in Heaven with those whom you have
permitted me to love on earth.' In times of duress he would take refuge in the
reading of the Bible and the
Fathers of the Church."[6]
For
a time he took into his family the young student Frédéric Ozanam (1813–1853), one of the founders of
the Conference of Charity, later
known as the Society of Saint Vincent de Paul.
Through Ampère, Ozanam had contact with leaders of the neo-Catholic movement,
such as François-René de Chateaubriand, Jean-Baptiste Henri Lacordaire, and Charles Forbes René de Montalembert. Ozanam
was beatified by Pope John Paul II in
1998.
Work in electromagnetism
In
September 1820, Ampère's friend and eventual eulogist François Arago showed
the members of the French Academy of Sciences the surprising discovery of Danish
physicist Hans Christian Ørsted that a magnetic needle is
deflected by an adjacent electric current. Ampère
began developing a mathematical and physical theory to understand the
relationship between electricity and magnetism.
Furthering Ørsted's experimental work, Ampère showed that two parallel wires carrying
electric currents attract or repel each other, depending on whether the
currents flow in the same or opposite directions, respectively - this laid the
foundation of electrodynamics. He also applied mathematics in generalizing
physical laws from these experimental results. The most important of these was
the principle that came to be called Ampère's law, which states that the mutual action of two lengths
of current-carrying wire is proportional to their lengths and to the
intensities of their currents. Ampère also applied this same principle to
magnetism, showing the harmony between his law and French physicist Charles Augustin de Coulomb's law
of magnetic action. Ampère's devotion to, and skill with, experimental
techniques anchored his science within the emerging fields of experimental
physics.
Ampère
also provided a physical understanding of the electromagnetic relationship,
theorizing the existence of an "electrodynamic molecule" (the
forerunner of the idea of the electron) that
served as the component element of both electricity and magnetism. Using this
physical explanation of electromagnetic motion, Ampère developed a physical
account of electromagnetic phenomena that was both empirically demonstrable and
mathematically predictive. In 1827 Ampère published his magnum opus, Mémoire
sur la théorie mathématique des phénomènes électrodynamiques uniquement déduite
de l’experience (Memoir on the Mathematical Theory of Electrodynamic
Phenomena, Uniquely Deduced from Experience), the work that coined the name of
his new science, electrodynamics, and became known ever after as its
founding treatise.
In
1827 Ampère was elected a Foreign Member of the Royal Society and in
1828, a foreign member of the Royal Swedish Academy of Science.[7]
Honours
Legacy
City of Lion
Andre Ampere 1825
In
recognition of his contribution to the creation of modern electrical science,
an international convention, signed at the 1881 International Exposition of
Electricity, established the ampere as a standard unit of electrical measurement, along
with the coulomb, volt, ohm, watt and farad, which
are named, respectively, after Ampère's contemporaries Charles-Augustin de Coulomb of
France, Alessandro Volta of Italy, Georg Ohm of Germany, James Watt of Scotland and Michael Faraday of
England. Ampère's name is one of the 72 names inscribed on the
Eiffel Tower.
Several
items are named after Ampère; many streets and squares, schools, a Lyon metro station, microarchitecture, a mountain on the moon and an electric ferry in
Norway.[9]
Writings
- Considérations sur la théorie mathématique du jeu, Perisse, Lyon Paris 1802, online lesen im Internet-Archiv
- André-Marie Ampère
(1822), Recueil
d'observations électro-dynamiques : contenant divers mémoires,
notices, extraits de lettres ou d'ouvrages périodiques sur les sciences,
relatifs a l'action mutuelle de deux courans électriques, à celle qui
existe entre un courant électrique et un aimant ou le globe terrestre, et
à celle de deux aimans l'un sur l'autre
(in French), Chez Crochard, retrieved 26 September 2010
- André-Marie
Ampère; Babinet (Jacques, M.) (1822), Exposé des nouvelles
découvertes sur l'électricité et le magnétisme
(in German), Chez Méquignon-Marvis, retrieved 26 September 2010
- André-Marie Ampère
(1824), Description
d'un appareil électro-dynamique
(in French), Chez Crochard … et Bachelie, retrieved 26 September 2010
- André-Marie Ampère
(1826), Théorie des
phénomènes électro-dynamiques, uniquement déduite de l'expérience
(in French), Méquignon-Marvis, retrieved 26 September 2010
- André-Marie Ampère
(1834), Essai sur la
philosophie des sciences, ou, Exposition analytique d'une classification
naturelle de toutes les connaissances humaines
(in German), Chez Bachelier, retrieved 26 September 2010
Partial translations:
- Magie, W.M. (1963). A Source Book in Physics. Harvard: Cambridge
MA. pp. 446–460.
- Lisa
M. Dolling; Arthur F. Gianelli; Glenn N. Statile, eds. (2003). The Tests
of Time: Readings in the Development of Physical Theory. Princeton: Princeton
University Press. pp. 157–162. ISBN 978-0691090856..
Complete translations:
References
-
"Ampère". Random House Webster's
Unabridged Dictionary.
Dictionary of Scientific Biography. United States of America: Charles Scribner's Sons.
1970.
"Andre-Marie
Ampere". IEEE Global History
Network. IEEE. Retrieved 21 July 2011.
One or more of the preceding
sentences incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain: Chisholm, Hugh, ed. (1911). "Ampère, André Marie". Encyclopædia Britannica. 1 (11th ed.). Cambridge University
Press. pp. 878–879.
"Biography of
Andre Marie Ampere".
Retrieved 3 September 2019.
"Catholic
Encyclopedia". Retrieved 29 December 2007.
"Library and
Archive Catalogue". Royal Society. Retrieved 13 March 2012.
Index biographique
des membres et associés de l'Académie royale de Belgique (1769–2005) p. 15
"Batterifergen
har måttet stå over avganger. Nå er
løsningen klar". Teknisk Ukeblad. 18 November 2016.
Retrieved 19 November
2016.
With affection,
Ruben
