André Marie Ampère

Lived 1775 – 1836.

André-Marie Ampère made the revolutionary discovery that a wire carrying electric current can attract or repel another wire next to it that’s also carrying electric current. The attraction is magnetic, but no magnets are necessary for the effect to be seen. He went on to formulate Ampere’s Law of electromagnetism and produced the best definition of electric current of his time.

Ampère also proposed the existence of a particle we now recognize as the electron, discovered the chemical element fluorine, and grouped elements by their properties over half a century before Dmitri Mendeleev produced his periodic table.

The SI unit of electric current, the ampere, is named in his honor.

Beginnings

André-Marie Ampère was born into a well-to-do family in the city of Lyon, France, on January 20, 1775. His father was Jean-Jacques Ampère, a businessman; his mother was Jeanne Antoinette Desutières-Sarcey, the orphaned daughter of a silk-merchant. André-Marie’s parents already had a daughter, Antoinette, born two years before André-Marie.

It was an intellectually exciting period in French history; Antoine Lavoisier was revolutionizing chemistry; and Voltaire and Jean-Jacques Rousseau, the leaders of the French Enlightenment, were urging that society should be founded on science, logic, and reason rather than the religious teachings of the Catholic Church.

When André-Marie was five years old, his family moved to a country estate near the village of Poleymieux about six miles (10 km) from Lyon. His father had grown so wealthy that he no longer needed to spend much time in the city. A second daughter Josephine was born when André-Marie was eight.

An Unusual Education
The education André-Marie received was rather unusual. His father was a great admirer of Jean-Jacques Rousseau, one of the leaders of the French Enlightenment. He decided to follow Rousseau’s approach for André-Marie’s education. This meant no formal lessons.

André-Marie could do as he pleased, learning about anything he felt like. He was also allowed to read anything he wanted to from his father’s large library. A recipe for disaster, you may think? In fact, it worked! And it worked exceptionally well. André-Marie developed an insatiable thirst for knowledge, going as far as learning entire pages of an encyclopedia by heart.

Although a child of the French Enlightenment, André-Marie did not reject the church, and he remained a practicing Catholic throughout his life.

“My father… never required me to study anything, but he knew how to inspire in me a great desire for knowledge. Before learning to read, my greatest pleasure was to listen to passages from Buffon’s natural history. I constantly requested him to read me the history of animals and birds…”

 

Mathematics
Aged 13, André-Marie began a serious study of mathematics using books in his father’s library. He submitted a paper about conic sections to the Academy of Lyon, but it was rejected.

The rejection spurred him into working harder than ever. His father bought him specialist books to help him improve. He also took his son into Lyon, where Abbot Daburon gave him lessons in calculus – the first formal lessons André-Marie ever had.

Physics
Having taken his son for formal mathematics lessons, his father also took him to Lyon’s college to attend some physics lectures, which resulted in André-Marie beginning to read physics books as well as mathematics books.

Revolution Followed by Tragedies
Life so far had been peaceful and enjoyable for André-Marie, but a period of tragedy was beginning to unfold.

In 1789, when André-Marie was 14, the French Revolution began.

In 1791, while André-Marie continued his home-studies on their country estate, the revolutionaries gave his father the legal role of Justice of the Peace.

In 1792, André-Marie’s older sister Antoinette died.

In 1793, the Jacobin faction of the revolution guillotined his father. (The great chemist Antoine Lavoisier was guillotined by revolutionaries in 1794.)

Mercifully, André-Marie, studying mathematics and science on the family estate, survived the revolution’s reign of terror. He was devastated by his father’s death and abandoned his studies for a year.

Becoming a Mathematician and Scientist

In late 1797, aged 22, André-Marie Ampère opened up shop as a private mathematics tutor in Lyon. He proved to be an excellent tutor, and soon students were flocking to him for help.

His tutoring work came to the attention of Lyon’s intellectuals, who were impressed by Ampère’s knowledge and his enthusiasm.

In 1802, he became a school teacher in the town of Bourg 40 miles (60 km) from Lyon. A year later he returned to Lyon to work in another teaching position.

In 1804, he moved to the French capital, Paris, tutoring university level classes at the École Polytechnique. His work impressed other mathematicians so much that he was promoted to full professor of mathematics in 1809, despite having no formal qualifications.

André-Marie Ampère’s Contributions to Science

Electromagnetism and Electrodynamics

In 1800, while Ampère worked as a private tutor in Lyon, Alessandro Volta had invented the electric battery. One result of this was that for the first time ever, scientists could produce a steady electric current.

In April 1820, Hans Christian Oersted discovered that a flow of electric current in a wire could deflect a nearby magnetic compass needle. Oersted had discovered a link between electricity and magnetism – electromagnetism.

In September 1820, François Arago demonstrated Oersted’s electromagnetic effect to France’s scientific elite at the French Academy in Paris. Ampère was present, having been elected to the Academy in 1814.

Ampère was fascinated by Oersted’s discovery and decided he would try to understand why electric current produced a magnetic effect.

The Electron

To explain the relationship between electricity and magnetism, Ampère proposed the existence of a new particle responsible for both of these phenomena – the electrodynamic molecule, a microscopic charged particle we can think of as a prototype of the electron. Ampère correctly believed that huge numbers of these electrodynamic molecules were moving in electric conductors, causing electric and magnetic phenomena.

Discovery of Fluorine

Ampère did not restrict his interests to mathematics and physics; they were wide ranging and included philosophy and astronomy. He was particularly interested in chemistry. In fact, preceding his work in electromagnetism, he made significant contributions to chemistry.

Ampère discovered and named the element fluorine. In 1810, he proposed that the compound we now call hydrogen fluoride consisted of hydrogen and a new element: the new element had similar properties to chlorine he said. He and Humphry Davy, who was British, entered into correspondence (even though France and Britain were at war). Ampère proposed that fluorine could be isolated by electrolysis, which Davy had previously used to discover elements such as sodium and potassium.

It was only in 1886 that French chemist Henri Moissan finally isolated fluorine. He achieved this using electrolysis, the method Ampère had recommended.