André Marie Ampère

André Marie Ampère (1775 - 1836) Photo, German Museum, Munich

André Marie Ampère was born in Lyon on the January 20, 1775. His father was a silk dealer and follower of Rousseau, and his mother Jeanne Desutieres Sarcey was deeply religious. When Ampère was seven, the family moved to Poleymieux, where they owned a summer dwelling. With his two sisters and parents, they lived in relatively cramped conditions, and Ampère had few outside contacts. He enjoyed no real education, but followed his own interests, like Rousseau's Emile. His father provided him with every book that would interest him, and he was a rapid reader, with a great intellectual appetite (for Euler, l’Hospital, Descartes, d’Alembert, Lagrange and so on). Due to him breaking his right arm as a youngster, his handwriting remained childlike. Furthermore, he was short-sighted, saving him from military service in the Napoleonic army.

In 1792, his sister Antoinette died at the age of 20. His father was sent to the guillotine in 1793, charged with being a counter-revolutionary. Afterwards, Ampère spoke very little, wandering dazed and confused through the countryside, for the ensuing year.

He married in 1799, losing his wife to cancer of the abdomen four years later. She left him with a small son. In 1801, he was professor for physics and chemistry at the École Centrale in Bourg-en-Bresse, and from 1803, professor for mathematics at the Lycée of Lyon. Following the death of his wife he relocated to Paris (École Polytechnique). He remarried in 1806, separating, however, two years later. The marriage resulted in a small daughter, for whom he needed to provide. While employed as the Inspector General of the French education system, he died in Lyon, on June 10, 1836.