Georg Simon Ohm

  Georg Simon Ohm 

SMARTEEE

Georg Simon Ohm (b. Erlangen, Germany, 16th March 1789, d. Munich, Germany, 6th July 1854) was a

mathematician and a physicist. The SI unit of electrical resistance was named after him as the Ohm. His

father, Johan Wolfgang Ohm, was a master locksmith. Johan Wolfgang married Maria Elizabeth Beck,

daughter of a master tailor. They were a protestant couple. Of their seven children only three survived

childhood: Georg Simon the eldest, Martin the mathematician, and Elizabeth Barbara. Johan Wolfgang gave

his sons a solid education in mathematics, physics, chemistry and the philosophies of Kant and Fichte. Their

mathematical talents were soon recognised by the Erlangen professor Karl Christian Von Langsdorf. Georg

Simon matriculated on the 3rd of May 1805 at the University of Erlangen. He studied 3 semesters there until

his father's displeasure at his supposed overindulgence in dancing, billiards, and ice skating forced him to

withdraw to rural Switzerland.

He began to teach mathematics in September 1806 in Gottstadt. He received his PhD on the 25th of October

1811. Lack of money forced him to seek employment from the German government. But, the best he could

obtain was a post as a teacher of mathematics and physics at a poorly attended 'Realschule' in Bamberg. He

worked there with great dissatisfaction. In 1817, Ohm was offered the position of 'Oberlehrer' of mathematics

and physics at the Jesuit Gymnasium at Cologne. He began his experiments on electricity and magnetism

after 1820. His first scientific paper was published in 1825 in which he sought a relationship between the

decrease in the force exerted by current­carrying wires and the length of the wires. In April 1826, he published

two important papers on galvanicm electricity. He published his book on Ohm's law, Die Galvanische Kette

Mathematische Bearbeit, in 1827. Sir John Leslie had already provided both theoretical discussion and

experimental confirmation of Ohm's law in a paper written in 1791 and published in 1824, which was not

accepted. Ohm's law was so coldly received that Ohm resigned his post at Cologne. Ohm obtained the

professorship of physics at the Polytechninische Schedule in Nuremberg in 1833. Finally, his work began to be

recognised. In 1841, he was awarded the Copley Medal of the Royal Society of London and was made a

foreign member a year later.