Georg Simon Ohm

Ohm's main interest was electricity, which had recently been advanced by Alessandro Volta's invention of the battery. Ohm made only a modest living and his experimental equipment was primitive. Despite this, he made his own metal wire, producing a range of thickness and lengths of remarkable consistent quality. In his nine years at the Jesuit's college, he did many experiments on the nature of electronic circuits. He aimed for absolute accuracy in everything he did. In 1827, he was able to show from his experiments that there was a simple relationship between resistance, current and voltage.

His findings became known as "Ohm's Law" and stated that the amount of steady current through a material is directly proportional to the voltage across the material, for some fixed temperature: I=V/R These fundamental relationships are great importance and represent the real beginning of electrical circuit analysis. Ohm is now recognised as a Genius, perhaps the Mozart of Electricity!

Like many other greats, his findings were not initially accepted or seen to have any significant importance. Ohm was subjected to ridicule and lived in poverty and received no credit for his findings until he was made director of the Polytechnic School of Nüremberg in 1833.

The Royal Society in London eventually recognized the significance of his work and awarded him, in 1841, the Copley Medal, roughly equivalent to today's Nobel Prize. The following year, they admitted him as a member.

In 1849 Ohm's lifelong dream was realized when he was given a Professorship of Experimental Physics at the University of Munich, which was only established in 1826. On July 7th,1854 he passed away in Munich, at the age of 65.

Ohm was buried in what is now the Old Southern Cemetery (Alter Suedfriedhof) in Munich. His gravestone lies flat and the original engraving, which gave the wrong dates for his birth and death, is no longer readable. A rather crude marking with thin metal strips retains the identity but lacks the respect such a great man deserves.

One of the craters on the moon is named after Georg Ohm and a bust stands inthe Munich Hall of Fame. There is a memorial in front of the Munich Technical University and a plaque in the wall of the new underground station in Garching. Some of the equipment he used can be seen in the Deutsche Museum.