The New International Encyclopædia/Weber, Wilhelm

WEBER, Wilhelm (1804-91). A German physicist. He was born at Wittenberg, and was educated at Halle. In 1825, in association with his brother, Ernst Heinrich Weber, he published Die Wellenlehre. He became assistant professor of physics at Halle in 1827, and professor at Göttingen in 1831. He was one of the seven professors of Göttingen who were removed in 1837 for having protested against the violation of the Constitution. He held the chair of physics at Leipzig, 1843-49. when he was restored to his former position at Göttingen. While living in that city he became acquainted with Gauss, and in 1833 they jointly devised an electro-magnetic telegraph. They also founded the Magnetic Union and made many observations on terrestrial magnetism. An important achievement of Weber's is the introduction of the absolute system of electrical units modeled on the work of Gauss, who first devised such a system of units in his experiments in magnetism. Weber determined the value of the practical units in absolute measure and at the International Electrical Congress held at Paris in 1881 his system with certain modifications was adopted and the volt, ampere, coulomb, and farad were defined. Weber's works were published by the Göttingen Academy of Science in 1892. A biographical sketch entitled Wilhelm Weber, by Heinrich Weber, was published at Berlin in 1893.