TheSI unit ofelectric current, theampere (A), is named after him. His name is also one of the72 names inscribed on theEiffel Tower. The termkinematic is the English version of hiscinématique,[3] which he constructed from theGreekκίνημαkinema ("movement, motion"), itself derived fromκινεῖνkinein ("to move").[4][5]
André-Marie Ampère was born on 20 January 1775 in Lyon to Jean-Jacques Ampère, a prosperous businessman, and Jeanne Antoinette Desutières-Sarcey Ampère, during the height of theFrench Enlightenment. He spent his childhood and adolescence at the family property atPoleymieux-au-Mont-d'Or near Lyon.[6] Jean-Jacques Ampère, a successful merchant, was an admirer of the philosophy ofJean-Jacques Rousseau, whose theories of education (as outlined in his treatiseÉmile) were the basis of Ampère's education. Rousseau believed that young boys should avoid formal schooling and pursue instead a "direct education 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 asGeorges-Louis Leclerc, comte de Buffon'sHistoire naturelle, générale et particulière (begun in 1749) andDenis Diderot andJean le Rond d'Alembert'sEncyclopédie (volumes added between 1751 and 1772) thus became Ampère's schoolmasters.[citation needed] The young Ampère, however, soon resumed hisLatin lessons, which enabled him to master the works ofLeonhard Euler andDaniel Bernoulli.[7]
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 apolymath, his reading embraced history, travels, poetry, philosophy, and the natural sciences.[7] His mother was a devout Catholic, so Ampère was also initiated into theCatholic faith along with Enlightenment science. TheFrench Revolution (1789–99) that began during his youth was also influential: Ampère's father was called intopublic service by the new revolutionary government,[8] becoming a local judge (juge de paix) in a small town near Lyon. When theJacobin faction seized control of the Revolutionary government in 1792, his father Jean-Jacques Ampère resisted the new political tides, and he wasguillotined on 24 November 1793, as part of theJacobin purges of the period.
In 1796, Ampère met Julie Carron and, in 1799, they were married. Ampère took his first regular job in 1799 as amathematics 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 theNapoleonic regime in France, and the young father and teacher found new opportunities for success within the technocratic structures favoured by the new FrenchFirst Consul. In 1802, Ampère was appointed a professor ofphysics andchemistry at the École Centrale inBourg-en-Bresse, leaving his ailing wife and infant son in Lyon. He used his time in Bourg to research mathematics, producingConsidérations sur la théorie mathématique du jeu (1802; "Considerations on the Mathematical Theory of Games"), a treatise onmathematical probability that he sent to theParis Academy of Sciences in 1803.
After the death of his wife in July 1803,[9][10] Ampère moved to Paris, where he began a tutoring post at the newÉcole 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 inphilosophy andastronomy, respectively, at theUniversity of Paris, and in 1824 he was elected to the prestigious chair inexperimental physics at theCollège de France. In 1814, Ampère was invited to join the class of mathematicians in the newInstitut 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, hisFirst Communion, the reading of Antoine Leonard Thomas's "Eulogy of Descartes", and theTaking of the Bastille. On the day of his wife's death he wrote two verses from thePsalms, 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 theBible and theFathers of the Church."[11]
In September 1820, Ampère's friend and eventual eulogistFrançois Arago showed the members of the French Academy of Sciences the surprising discovery byDanish physicistHans Christian Ørsted that amagnetic needle is deflected by an adjacentelectric current. Ampère began developing a mathematical and physical theory to understand the relationship betweenelectricity andmagnetism. 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 calledAmpère'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 physicistCharles Augustin de Coulomb's law of electric 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 theelectron) 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. Almost 100 years later, in 1915,Albert Einstein together withWander Johannes de Haas made the proof of the correctness of Ampère's hypothesis through theEinstein–de Haas effect. 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.
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.ISBN978-0691090856..
Ampère and the history of electricity – a French-language, edited by CNRS, site with Ampère's correspondence (full text and critical edition with links to manuscripts pictures, more than 1000 letters), an Ampère bibliography, experiments, and 3D simulations
Ampère Museum – a French-language site from the museum in Poleymieux-au-Mont-d'or, nearLyon, France
Ampere's Electrodynamics Includes complete English translation ofTheory of Electrodynamic Phenomena
