Amp�re, Andr� Marie 1775-1836
French mathematician and physicist

He was born in Lyons, where his father was a wealthy merchant. The family then moved to the nearby village of Poleymieux, where their house is now a national museum. Amp�re educated himself by means of his father's library. He gained a lectureship in mathematics at the �cole Polytechnique in Paris in 1803, was appointed Inspector-General of the Imperial University in 1808 and was elected to the chair of experimental physics at the Coll�ge de France in 1824. Although he contributed to a number of fields, he is best known for laying the foundations of the science of electrodynamics through his theoretical and experimental work, following Hans Christian Oersted's discovery in 1820 of the magnetic effects of electric currents, in Observations �lectro-dynamiques (1822, 'Electrodynamic Observations') and Th�ories des ph�nom�nes �lectro-dynamiques (1830, 'Theory of Electrodynamic Phenomena'). Amp�re was elected FRS, and his name is given to the basic SI unit of electric current (ampere, amp).

Bibliography: James R Hofmann, Andr�-Marie Amp�re (1995)