André-Marie Ampère
20 January 1775 – 10 June 1836
André-Marie Ampère (1775-1836) was a French physicist and mathematician who founded the science of electrodynamics, now known as electromagnetism. Following Ørsted's discovery that electric currents deflect magnets, Ampère formulated the mathematical laws governing forces between current-carrying conductors; the SI unit of electric current, the ampere, is named after him.
Lived at the same time
Well-documented people whose lives overlapped with André-Marie Ampère.
- Alexander von Humboldt (1769–1859) Overlapped 61 years →
- Caroline Herschel (1750–1848) Overlapped 61 years →
- J. M. W. Turner (1775–1851) Overlapped 61 years →
- John Dalton (1766–1844) Overlapped 61 years →
- Muhammad Ali Pasha (1769–1849) Overlapped 61 years →
- Élisabeth Vigée Le Brun (1755–1842) Overlapped 61 years →
Life events
André-Marie Ampère was born in Lyon to a prosperous merchant family and was largely self-educated at the family estate in Poleymieux.
Source: en.wikipedia.orgHis father, who had served as a justice of the peace in Lyon, was guillotined during the Jacobin purges, a loss that devastated the young Ampère.
Source: en.wikipedia.orgAmpère married Julie Carron; her death in 1803 affected him deeply for the rest of his life.
Source: en.wikipedia.orgAmpère took his first regular teaching post at the école centrale in Bourg-en-Bresse, where he wrote a treatise on the mathematical theory of games.
Source: en.wikipedia.orgAmpère was appointed répétiteur at the École Polytechnique in Paris, becoming professor of mathematics there in 1809.
Source: en.wikipedia.orgAmpère was elected a member of the Académie des Sciences in Paris.
Source: en.wikipedia.orgWithin weeks of learning of Ørsted's discovery that a current deflects a compass needle, Ampère demonstrated that parallel currents attract or repel each other and began formulating the mathematical theory of electrodynamics.
Source: en.wikipedia.orgAmpère became professor at the Collège de France in Paris.
Source: en.wikipedia.orgAmpère published his 'Mémoire sur la théorie mathématique des phénomènes électrodynamiques uniquement déduite de l'expérience', the founding text of electrodynamics containing Ampère's force law.
Source: en.wikipedia.orgAmpère died of pneumonia in Marseille while on an inspection tour of universities; he was later reinterred in Montmartre Cemetery in Paris.
Source: en.wikipedia.org