Life

Georg Simon Ohm was born on March 17, 1789 in Erlangen, Germany. His parents were Johann Wolfgang Ohm, and he was a locksmith. His mother was named Maria Elizabeth Beck and she was a tailor. After Georg was born the Ohm’s had two other kids. One was a boy named Martin Ohm, and the other was a girl named Elizabeth Barbara Ohm.

As Georg and Martin got older their father educated them as they were too poor to afford regular schooling. But their father taught them well and they both grew a love for technology and mechanics. At the age of 11, he enrolled in Erlangen Gymnasium, and he continued his education there for four more years until he was 15. In 1805, Georg Ohm enrolled in Erlangen University, where he had trouble focusing on his studies and fell behind because of extracurricular activities like billiards, dancing, and ice skating.

His father became angry at Georg for failing his studies. So he sent him to Switzerland where he took up a post as a mathematics teacher in Gottstadt Bei Nydau. After teaching there for four more years he left Gottstadt Bi Nydau and became a private tutor in Neuchatel. Finally he got tired of teaching at Neuchatel and went back to Erlangen University in April of 1811.

In 1826 Georg became tired of teaching and took a break from it to focus on his personal studies. He worked on a book called The Galvanic Circuit Investigated Mathematically which he expected to see receive a lot of enthusiasm, but it didn't. This angered Georg, so he left to teach in Berlin. There he became a mathematics teacher at the School of Nuremberg. In 1826, his work started to get recognized and he received the Copley Medal from the Royal Society of London.

Many years later, in 1852 he achieved his life goal of being put on the chair of physics at the University of Munich. Georg died two years later in 1854.

Education and Teaching

As I stated before, Georg and his brother Martin were both educated by their father Johann who had educated himself. Johann taught both Georg and Martin mathematics, chemistry, physics, and philosophy at a very high standard. At the age of only 11, Ohm enrolled himself into Erlangen Gymnasium. He was so eager to learn, but at the Erlangen Gymnasium, he soon learned that he was one of the only students wanting to learn.

So at the age of 15, he left Erlangen Gymnasium. When he turned 16 though, he enrolled himself back into the University of Erlangen. However, here he had trouble staying on task and using his time wisely. He got too involved in other extracurricular activities. Ohm loved dancing, ice skating, and playing billiards and got too focused on them, and not his school studies.

Johann soon realized his son was wasting his years he could use to get a good education, so he sent him to Switzerland to find a different education he could focus on better. In Switzerland at the age of 17, Ohm took up a post as a mathematics teacher at the Gottstadt Bei Nydau. The next year in 1807 Ohm’s former teacher at the University of Erlangen, Karl Christian Von Langsdorf, left the University of Erlangen to take a job at the University of Heidlberg. Ohm wanted to join Dr. Langsdorf, but his father wouldn't allow it and advised him to stay at his current job.

In March of 1809, Ohm again left his job at Gottstadt Bei Nydau. He then went to Neuchatel and became a private tutor there. All the while he continued his own personal studies of math and physics. He continued there for two more years until 1811 and then finally went back to teaching at his original school, the University of Erlangen.

Discoveries and Research

The first person to discover electricity was a Greek philosopher name Thales. He described rubbing two pieces of cloth together charged them. This is now what is called static electricity. Many people also give the credit of the discovery of electricity to Ben Franklin, with his experiment of the kite and the key or the lightning rod. Ever since then, the technology with electricity has only advanced even more, and one of the people who helped that cause the most was Dr. Georg Simon Ohm.

Over his lifetime Ohm made many groundbreaking discoveries. Most of them didn't get much recognition at the time, but that would change later in his life. Ohm started his own personal research in 1825, and over that time he liked researching electricity even though most of his life he had taught mathematics. Ohm investigated things like how much electromagnetic force a wire carrying an electric current would produce. He made a hypothesis about this experiment and stated that the longer the wire carrying the current, the more electromagnetic force it would produce. This he stated as Ohm’s Law.

After Ohm’s experiments with electricity he wrote a book about some of his discoveries called The Galvanic Circuit Investigated Mathematically. Ohm took much pride in this book, but it didn't become very popular at the time. Ohm also created a mathematical equation to find out the amount of voltage in an electrical current. In order to find the amount of voltage, the Ohms must be multiplied by the amps in the electrical current.

Another law Ohm created was not associated with electricity at all. In fact, it had to do with music. Ohm's acoustic law states that a musical sound is perceived by the ear as a set of a number of constituent pure harmonic tones. Ohm did enjoy music in his later life which might be the reason he created this law, but nobody knows for sure why he did.

Awards and Recognition

Over Georg Ohm’s lifetime, he made many great discoveries and was justly awarded for them. Closer to the end of his life, he was awarded the Copley Medal for Ohm’s law and his knowledge of physics and mathematics. There is also a crater on the moon named, Ohm, after him. This award being the least honorable as the moon has tons of craters named after multiple people.

In 1852, he was made part of the Royal Society of London for his great brilliance in mathematics and physics. This was Ohm’s life goal and a very honorable one considering only very knowledgeable people can get into the Society. Other notable members of the Royal Society of London include J. Robert Oppenheimer, who created the nuclear bomb, and Isaac Newton, who discovered gravity.

A unit of electrical resistance was named after him, the Ohm. The Ohm is used in his own formula which is called Ohm's law. It calculates voltage by multiplying amperes and Ohms. There was also a school named after him. It was the Ohm Institute of Nuremberg.

Works Cited

“Georg Simon Ohm.” Hutchinson’s Biography Database (2011) : 1. MasterFILE Premier. Web. 8 February, 2016.

James, Ioan. Remarkable Physicists from Galileo to Yukawa. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2004. Print.

Karwatlea, Dennis. “Georg Simon Ohm.” Tech Directions 57.3 (1997) : II. MasterFILE Premier. Web. 8 February, 2016.

O’ Connor, JJ and Robertson, E.F. “University of St. Andrews” Georg Simon Ohm. School of Mathematics and Statistics. University of St. Andrews, Scotland. January 30, 2000. Web. February 12, 2016.