The New International Encyclopædia/Ohm, Georg Simon

OHM, ōm, 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. (1820), under the title of “Bestimmung des Gesetzes nach welchem Metalle die Contaktelectricität leiten,” etc. An exposition of the theory is contained in The Galvanic Chain, Mathematically Worked Out (1854). 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. See Scientific Works of Georg Simon Ohm, by Eugene Lommel, a biographical sketch in Smithsonian Report, 1891, Washington; also, Mann, Georg Simon Ohm (Leipzig, 1892).