Hans Christian Ørsted

Hans Christian Ørsted (August 14th 1777 with Rudkøbing - March 9th 1851 with Copenhagen) was a physicist and a chemist Danish, influenced by the German thought (of Emmanuel Kant but also of the philosophy of Nature).

Biography

Interested as of its more young age by chemistry and the natural history, but also by the literature, it was directed, under the influence of his father Apothicaire, worms of the studies which made of him a pharmacist in 1797 whereas it had just been his twenty years old. Three years later, it obtained a diploma of medicine which could have ensured its future in the medical community to him.

But its passion for chemistry (in particular for the electrochemical forces) and its growing interest for the philosophy of nature, were the releases of all its reflections and explain of good part why it was interested in work of Ritter on the Galvanisme.

Of return of its stay of study in Paris - where it met inter alia Cuvier and Biot - it worked in close cooperation with Ritter and became, after the death of this last, its spiritual heir.

Discovered interaction electricity - magnetism

In 1820 it discovered the relation between the electricity and the Magnétisme in an experiment which seems to us today very simple and which it carried out in front of its students.

It showed, by the experiment, that a transporting wire of the current was able to make move the magnetized needle of a Boussole. There could thus be interaction between the electric forces on the one hand and the magnetic forces on the other hand, which was revolutionist for the time.

Ørsted did not suggest any satisfactory explanation of the phenomenon, nor did not try to represent the phenomenon within a mathematical framework. It however quickly published its experimental results in a short Latin article entitled: Tried out circa effectum conflictus electrici in acum magneticam . Its writings were represented and diffused in the whole of the European scientific communities and its highly criticized results.

Amp taken knowledge of its results in September 1820 and quickly developed the theory which was going to allow the emergence of the electromagnetism. The success of this theory contributed to the recognition of Ørsted, as well in the scientific community as among its fellow-citizens.

The Royal Society decrees the to him Médaille Copley in 1820.

Other elements

He was freemason.

In 1825 it produced for the first time of the Aluminum.

Two hundred and thousand people attended her burial. The Danish population lived its loss like an major event and like a national mourning because, thanks to its discovery and to its gifts of speaker, it had contributed to give an active and positive image of Denmark.

Notice

Ørsted was the first nobody to discover that electricity and magnetism were connected. An Italian clerk, Gian Domenico Romagnosi, was advised 18 years before. He published his discovery in a local newspaper, and she was ignored scientific community. he is the founder of the technical Université of Denmark

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