Makers of Electricity

by Brother Potamian; James J. Walsh

When his attention was called to the publication, Ohm was perfectly ready to acknowledge the priority of Professor Langberg's claim and to give him all the credit that belonged to his discovery. At the beginning of the second part of his article, he said:

"I know not whether I should consider it lucky or unlucky that the extremely meritorious work of Langberg should have entirely escaped me and should have been lost to general recollection. Certain it is that, if I had had any knowledge of it before, my present investigations, which were occasioned by this elliptical system, would not have been made and I would have been spared a deal of work. In that case, however, a number of other and scarcely less important scientific principles would have remained hidden for the time being at least. Under the circumstances, the profound truth of the old proverb, 'Man proposes, but God disposes,' has been brought home to me again. What originally set me investigating this subject now proves to be without interest for science, since the problem has been solved before. On the other hand, a number of things of which I had no hint at all at the beginning of my researches, have come to take its place and compensate for it."

Perhaps nothing will show better than this, Ohm's disposition toward that Providence which overrules everything, and somehow, out of the mixture of good and evil in life, accomplishes things that make for the great purpose of creation. His eminently inquiring attitude towards science, which had on three occasions led him to tackle problems that had puzzled the greatest of experimental scientists, has been shown. He must have been, above all things, a man of a scientific turn of mind, in the sense that he was not ready to accept what had previously been accepted even by distinguished authorities in science, but was ready to look for new clews that would lead him to simpler explanations than any that had been offered before. In spite of this inquiring disposition, so eminently appropriate to the scientist, and constituting the basis of his success as an experimenter and scientific synthesist, he seems to have no doubts about the old explanation of the creation nor the all-wise directing power of a Divine Providence. This is all the more interesting, because already the materialistic view of things, which claims to know nothing except what can be learned from the matter around us, had begun to make its way in Europe, especially in scientific circles, but Ohm remained untouched by it.

Another example of this same state of mind in Ohm is to be found in the preface to his last great work, his contribution to molecular physics, in which he hoped to sum up all that he could discover and demonstrate mathematically with regard to the constitution of matter. He knew that he was taking up a work that would require many years and much laborious occupation of mind. He realized, too, that his duties as professor of physics and mathematics as well as the directorship of the museum and the consultancy to the department of telegraphs, left him comparatively little time for the work. He foresaw that he might not be able to finish it, yet hoped against hope that he would. In the preface to the first volume, he declared that he would devote himself to it at every possible opportunity, and that he hoped that God would spare him to complete it. This simplicity of confidence in the Almighty is indeed a striking characteristic of the man.

The work which Ohm began thus with such humble trust in God, was to contain his conclusions concerning the nature, size, form and mode of action of the atom, with the idea of being able to deduce, by the aid of analytical mechanics, all the phenomena of matter. Unfortunately, he was spared only to write the first, an introductory volume which bears the title, "Elements of the analytical geometry of space on a system of oblique co-ordinates." This did not touch, as he confesses, the ultimate problem he had in mind. The second volume was to have contained the dynamics of the structures of bodies, and a third and fourth were to be devoted to the physical investigation of the atom and its relation to other atoms and matter in general.

Ohm devoted himself, however, with too much ardor to his duties as teacher, to allow himself to give the time to his own work that would have enabled him to finish it. Among other things that he did for his students was to complete a text-book of physics. He confesses that he had always felt an aversion to working at a text-book, and yet was impelled to take up the task because he felt that in electricity, in sound and in optics, the only way in which his students would get his ideas, many of which were the result of his own work, was to have a text-book by himself, and he felt bound in duty to do this for them, as he had accepted the position of instructor. He succeeded in completing the book very rapidly by lithographing his lectures immediately after delivery and distributing copies to his classes.

It is almost needless to say that the work was, in its way, thoroughly original. It was accomplished with the ease with which he was always able to do things; but, unfortunately, the strain of the work told on him at his years much more than when, as a younger man, he was able to work without fatigue. He acknowledges, at the close of the preface, that the task has been too great, and that he should not have undertaken its accomplishment, and especially not in the hasty way in which it was done. This preface was dated Easter, 1854. Within a few months, Ohm's strength began to fail, and the end was not long in coming.

According to the translation of the address of Lommel, as it appeared in the Annual Report of the Smithsonian Institute for 1851, Ohm died as the result of repeated attacks of epilepsy, on July 6th, 1854. The date is correct; the mode of death, however, is surely reported under a misunderstanding. The physician who hears of epilepsy is prone at once to inquire as to its origin, and to wonder how long the patient had been suffering from it. There are no reports of previous attacks of epilepsy, and the sudden development of genuine epilepsy in fatal form at the age of 65 is quite unlikely.

His German biographer, Bauernfeind, who is quoted by Lommel as one of the authorities for the details of Ohm's life, and who was a pupil and intimate friend, gives quite a different account. Up to the very last day of his life, Ohm continued his lectures. His duties as professor appealed to his conscience as no others. On Thursday, July 6th, 1854, he delivered his last lecture. That night at ten o'clock he died. The cause of his death was given as a repeated apopleptic stroke. It is evidently because of the occurrence of more apopleptic seizures than one, that the assertion of epilepsy was introduced unto the account of his death.

For some days before his death, Ohm had been very weak, but had continued to fulfil every duty. To us in the modern time, it may seem surprising that there should be lectures in a university in July; but the second semester of the university year in Germany is not supposed to come to a close until the first of August, when the summer vacation begins, and lectures are continued until well on into July. The manner of Ohm's death, as told by his biographer friend, at once corrects the idea of epilepsy, and also shows that his passing came without any of the preliminary suffering that makes death a real misfortune. A half hour before his death, he had been entertaining some friends with lively recollections of the events of his early life in Cologne and Treves. He had been quite gay in the stories that he told, and almost boyishly happy in the recollections of those early days. For one for whom duty had meant so much in life, and who had always tried so faithfully to fulfil it, no happier call to higher things could possibly be imagined than that which came to Ohm.