Physicist Georg Simon Ohm

Georg Simon Ohm was born on March 16th, 1789. He died on July 6th, 1854. He was a German physicist. As a high school teacher, Ohm began his research with the recently invented electrochemical cell [ (Unknown. ) ] Using his own equipment, Ohm determined that there is a connection between the electrical forces (voltage) applied across a conductor and the resultant electric current. This known as Ohm’s law, which is named after him. Ohm was born in Erlangen, Bavaria. His parents were Johann Wolfgang Ohm and Maria Elizabeth Beck. They were Protestants.

Although his parents were not really educated, Ohm’s father educated himself enough to have Ohm home schooled. His mother died when he was ten. From early childhood, Georg and his brother Martin, a well-known mathematician, were both taught by their father in math, physic, and chemistry. Georg Simon attended Erlangen Gymnasium from age eleven to fifteen (Unknown. ) His father, concerned that his son was wasting the educational opportunity, sent Ohm to Switzerland. Then in September 1806, he started as a math teacher (Britannica. Karl Christian van Langsdorf left the University of Erlangen in early 1809 to go to the University of Heidelberg. Ohm wanted to go with him to Heidelberg to restart his math studies. Langsdorf told Ohm to continue with his studies of mathematics on his own. Rather reluctantly Ohm took his advice but he left his teaching post in Gottstadt bei Nydau in March 1809 to become a private tutor in Neuchatel. For two years he carried out his duties as a tutor while he followed Langsdorf’s advice and continued his private study of mathematics. Then in April 1811 he returned to the University of Erlangen.

His studies had stood him in good position for his receiving a doctorate from Erlangen on 25 October 1811 and immediately joined the staff as a mathematics lecturer. After three semesters Ohm gave up his university post because of unpromising prospects while he couldn’t make both ends meet with the lecturing post. The Bavarian government offered him a post as a teacher of mathematics and physics at a poor quality school in Bamberg and he took up the post there in January 1813. Feeling unhappy with his job, Georg devoted to writing an elementary book on Geometry as a way to prove his true ability.

The school was then closed down in February 1816. The Bavarian government sent him to an overcrowded school in Bamberg to help out with the mathematics teaching. After that, he sent the manuscript to King Wilhelm III of Prussia upon its completion. The King was satisfied with Georg’s work and he offered Ohm a position at a Jesuit Gymnasium of Cologne on 11 September 1817. Thanks to the school’s reputation for science education, Ohm found himself required to teach physics as well as mathematics. Luckily, the physics lab was well-equipped, so Ohm devoted himself to experimenting on physics.

Being the son of a locksmith, Georg had some practical experience with mechanical equipment. He published Die galvanishe Kette, mathematisch bearbeitet in 1827, which in English is The Galvanic Circuit Investigated Mathematically. Cologne’s Jesuit College did not laud his work and Ohm resigned his professorial position there and instead applied to and was employed by the Polytechnic school of Nuremberg. He came to the polytechnic school of Nuremberg in 1833, and in 1852 became professor of experimental physics in the university of Munich, where he later died. He is buried in the Alter Sudfriedhof in Munich.