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André-Marie Ampère and his English Acquaintances
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 January 2009
Extract
The early years of the nineteenth century were a time of new life and fresh thought in the scientific institutions of England and France. Despite the domination of the public scene by the rise and fall of Napoleon, scientists in the two countries were able to share their discoveries and work together. Napoleon even encouraged this; for example, foreigners were not barred from competing for the scientific prizes he offered. At a time when many of his compatriots were detained in France, Sir Humphry Davy was given special permission to travel freely because the object of his journey was scientific. His travels in France gave Davy the opportunity of meeting many of his most eminent contemporaries. The best scientific work in Europe was being done in Paris at the Collège de France and at the Ecole Polytechnique. H. R. Yorke, an English journalist in Paris in 1814, in spite of his prejudice against the Institut National affirms that ‘it is but a tribute of justice which every man owes to superiour genius to declare that in point of real science or experimental philosophy France is Without a Rival’.
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- Copyright © British Society for the History of Science 1965
References
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This experiment Faraday must have performed early in 1822, after vol. xii of the Quarterly Journal had gone to press. He wrote to Ampère: ‘I took a piece of copper wire similar in form to the magnet and having floated it upright in mercury placed a little cup on the top to contain a globule of mercury and then connected the voltaic piles just as they were with the magnet then placing the pole of a strong magnet beneath the cup containing the mercury. It when exactly in line with the axis of the wire made it rotate slowly on its own axis.’ This appears to be directly contradicted by Faraday's statement in a letter to Richard Phillips, dated 10 May 1836, in which he says: ‘I did not realize the rotations of the electromagnetic wire round its axis; that fact was discovered by M. Ampère at a later date …’ (Faraday, Experimental Researches, ii, 231Google Scholar). From this it is clear that his denial refers only to the October experiments which appeared in the Quarterly Journal, vol. xii, 74 ff.Google Scholar The only explanation of this discrepancy appears to be that Faraday did not consider it worth publishing this experiment once he found that Ampère had already made the discovery and announced it publicly.
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