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Dromo's Den
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[Up] [Dromo's Den] Georg Ohm Biography OHM, GEORG SIMON (1787-1854). A German physicist and discoverer of the famous law in electricity bearing his name. He was born and educated at Erlangen and, after giving instruction in mathematics and physics in a number of schools, he was called in 1817 to a chair in the Gymnasium at Cologne. He made a study of the laws of galvanic currents, and while investigating the relative conductivity of metals finally discovered the relation known as Ohm's law, which underlies all electrical theory and measurement. The experimental proof of this law was first published in a paper in Schweiggers Journal für Chemie und Physik, vol. xlvi (1826) , under the title of "Bestimmung des Gesetzes nach welchem Metalle die Contaktelectricität leiten, etc." An exposition of the theory is contained in Die galvanische Kette mathematisch bearbeitet (1827; Eng. trans., The Galvanic Circuit, Investigated Mathematically, 1891). He resigned his professorship at Cologne in 1826, was director of the Nuremberg Polytechnic School (1833-49), and was then called to the chair of physics at Munich. The name "ohm" was given to the unit of electrical resistance by the Paris Congress of Physicists (1881) . Previously (1846) the British Association had called the unit of resistance the ohmad. Consult Mann, Georg Simon Ohm (Leipzig, 1892), and Eugen von Lommel, Scientific Work of Georg Simon Ohm, translated by W. Hallock (Washington, 1893). The New International Encyclopaedia, Vol. XVII (New York: Dodd, Mead & Co., 1920) 397.
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