Abstract
ANDRÉ MARIE AMPÈRE was born in Lyons on January 20, 1775, and died at Marseilles on June 7, 1836. His early childhood was spent in the country near his birthplace and his first studies were directed by his parents. A childish pastime of carrying out complicated arithmetical calculations with little pebbles was prophetic of his future devotion to mathematical studies, a devotion that was evidenced again when his father, a retired merchant, began to teach him Latin; for the young Ampere quickly showed his great preference for mathematics, whereupon his father wisely allowed natural inclination to take its own course, providing the necessary introductory works from his own small library. But when these had been mastered, more advanced reading was necessary; and it is recorded that, at twelve years of age, Ampere, accompanied by his father, went to ask in his piping boyish voice for the loan of the works of Euler and Bernoulli from the College Library at Lyons. He appears to have mastered these classics also; and he read widely in the literary, historical, scientific and philosophical authors of his country. In fact, like a recent Lord Chancellor of England, he turned to the current encyclopaedia, in his case that of Diderot and d'Alembert, to equip himself with the accumulated knowledge of the ages; and a half-century later he was able to recite from memory whole passages from the famous “Encyclopedic” that expressed the genius of eighteenth century France.
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McKie, D. André Marie Ampere, 1775–1836. Nature 137, 934–935 (1936). https://doi.org/10.1038/137934a0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/137934a0