Who is Ampère?
André Ampere was a French physicist who fully demonstrated the relationship between electricity and magnetism and developed a new method for classifying the chemical element. The name ampere was given to the basic unit of electricity, the ampere.
About Ampere
André-Marie Ampere was a French physicist who used his skills in mathematics and statistics to observe and measure natural events discovered by other European scientists. He continued his work until he fully demonstrated the relationship between electricity and magnetism, and he also developed a new method for classifying chemical elements. He gave his name to the unit of electric current: the ampere.
He made the revolutionary discovery: any wire carrying an electric current can attract or repel another wire next to it that also carries an electric current (magnetic attraction) but without necessarily having any magnets. Find out about the biography, achievements, quotes, sayings, and all the information you need about Andre Ampere.
Ampere beginnings
André Marie Ampere was born in Lyon, France in 1775, to Jean-Jacques Ampere, a businessman. while his mother is Jeanne Antoinette Desautière-Sarcy, the orphaned daughter of a silk merchant. Ampère’s parents had a daughter, Antoinette, born two years before Andre Marie, and a younger sister, Josephine, and it was an intellectually exciting period in French history.
When Ampere was five years old, his family moved to a country farm near the village of Polemio, and his father had become very wealthy. The education that Ampère received was rather unorthodox. His father was a huge fan of Jean-Jacques Rousseau, one of the icons of the French Enlightenment.
He decided to follow Rousseau’s approach to Ampere’s education. This means that there are no formal lessons. Ampère can do as he pleases and can identify anything he is curious about. He was allowed to read anything he wanted from his father’s large library. This encouraged him to search and excel. He developed a desire for knowledge and memorized whole pages of encyclopedias by heart.
At the age of thirteen, Ampère began a serious study of mathematics using books in his father’s library. He submitted a paper on conic sections to the Lyon Academy, but it was rejected. The rejection made him work harder than ever.
His father bought him specialized books to help him develop. And he took him to Lyon, where (Abbott Deboron) gave him lessons in calculus, the first formal lessons Ampère had received.
After taking his son to formal mathematics lessons, his father took him to Lyon College to attend some physics lectures, which prompted Ampère to read physics books in addition to mathematics books.
Ampere achievements
In late 1797, when he was 22, Ampère opened an institute to teach mathematics at Lyons. He proved to be an excellent teacher, and students quickly flocked to him for help.
His teaching work caught the attention of Lyon’s intellectuals, who admired Ampere’s knowledge and enthusiasm. In 1802, he became a teacher in Bor, 60 km from Lyon. A year later, he returned to Lyon to work in another teaching position.
In 1804, he moved to Paris, where he taught university-level courses at the Ecole Polytechnique. He was promoted to full-time professor of mathematics in 1809, although he had no formal degrees.
In 1820, Ampere began by repeating Oersted’s work (Hans Christian Oersted discovered that the flow of electric current in a wire could deflect a needle with a nearby magnetic compass).
Before the end of September 1820, he made a discovery of his own: he found that if electric current flows in the same direction in two nearby parallel wires, the wires attract each other. If the electric currents flow in opposite directions, the wires repel each other.
Ampère found that parallel wires in which currents flow in the same direction attract each other. The currents of opposite directions Vtnavr. Ampère produced magnetism of attraction and repulsion in the complete absence of any magnets. And that was an amazing discovery. Where all the magnetism was generated electrically. This new field is called electrodynamics.
Next, Ampere found an equation that relates the magnitude of the magnetic field to the electric current it produces. This equation, known as Ampere’s law of an electric circuit (which is considered an advanced application in mathematics).
To clarify the relationship between electricity and magnetism, Ampère proposed the existence of a new particle responsible for these two phenomena (an electrodynamic molecule), a charged microscopic (ultra-small) particle that we can think of as a prototype for the electron. Ampère believed that huge numbers of these electrodynamic particles moved through electrical conductors, causing electrical and magnetic phenomena.
This equation applies when the electric current is constant. More than 40 years later, James Clerk Maxwell modified this equation so that it also applies to alternating current. This formula became one of Maxwell’s four famous equations that prove that light is an electromagnetic wave.
Ampere’s interests did not stop at mathematics and physics. Rather, it was broad in scope and included philosophy and astronomy. He was also particularly interested in chemistry. Prior to his work on electromagnetism, he made major contributions to chemistry. Ampere discovered a chemical element and named it fluorine.
In 1810, he proposed that the compound we now call hydrogen fluoride consisted of hydrogen and a new element: the new element had properties similar to chlorine. He suggested that fluorine could be isolated by electrolysis, which Humphry Davy had previously used to discover elements such as sodium and potassium.
In 1824, Ampère was appointed head of the experimental physics department at the Collège de France in Paris, a position he held for the rest of his life.
Ampere’s personal life
In 1793, French revolutionaries executed his father, Ampère’s psyche was destroyed by the death of his father and he stopped his studies for a year, and in 1792, his older sister Antoinette died. In 1799, Ampère married Catherine Antoinette Caron, usually called Julie. A year later, she gave birth to Jean-Jacques, who was named after Ampere’s father.
His wife died in 1803 of cancer after less than four years of marriage. Ampère married again in 1806, Jean-Françoise Boutout. The couple soon realized that their marriage was a mistake. They had a daughter, Albine, in 1807, the couple legally separated in 1808, and Albine lived with her father and aunt Josephine.
Ampere’s death
Ampere died in Marseille, France, in 1836 at the age of 61.
Fast facts on Ampere
In 1886, French chemist Henri Moissan isolated fluorine. He achieved this using electrolysis, a method recommended by Ampère.
Ampère was the first to define electric current as of the rotation of electric flux in a closed circuit.
He and British “Humphry Davy” exchanged correspondence, even though France and Britain were at war at the time.
Despite Ampere’s childhood, the French Enlightenment did not reject the Church, and remained a devout Catholic throughout his life and was interested in the sciences of religion as well as other sciences.
