Andre Marie Ampere Facts

Andre Marie Ampere Facts
Andre Marie Ampere (January 20, 1775 to June 10, 1836) was a major figure in both mathematics and physics. This French scientist is credited with some of the earliest work in electromagnetics, which he actually referred to as electrodynamics.
Interesting Andre Marie Ampere Facts:
From an early age, Ampere had an odd relationship with formal education, as his father subscribed to the teachings of philosopher Jean-Jacques Rousseau.
Rousseau supported an educational ideal that young students-boys in particular-should first acquire all the learning they could from nature and from their own interests.
Ampere therefore spent his childhood out of doors and in his father's well-stocked library, reading and learning all he could.
Once he returned to a more formal type of education, he learned Latin and read even further.
Due to his access to books on mathematics, he taught himself math and was performing at a high level in the upper mathematics fields as young as twelve years old.
While Ampere was still a teenager, his father was executed by guillotine during the French Revolution, only years before Ampere married and took a position as a mathematics teacher.
Ampere quickly rose in position and respect as a professor of mathematics, astronomy, and philosophy before being offered the chair of experimental physics at the College de France in 1824.
In the 1820s, Ampere began research on electrical currents and the resulting behavior of metals and wires.
He demonstrated that two wires would either attract or repel each other, depending on whether their currents were traveling in the same direction or opposite directions.
This discovery laid out the whole basis for electrodynamics.
His work also formed the foundation of Ampere's Law, which said the identical actions of two lengths of wire through which a current runs is in direct proportion to the lengths of the wires and the strengths of their currents.
He applied much of these same discoveries and research to the study of magnetism and the emerging work of electromagnetism.
These contributions led to Ampere being considered one of the top researchers in experimental physics in his day.
In his honor, the ampere became a standard unit of electrical measurement in 1881, forty-five years after his death.
The coulomb, volt, ohm, and watt are also named after scientists who either worked with Ampere or whose work he highly regarded and studied.


Related Links:
Facts
Scientists Facts
Animals Facts