“What do you call a tissue that is sleeping? A napkin.”
Wilhelm Eduard WeberBorn 24 Oct 1804; died 23 Jun 1891 at age 86. German physicist who investigated terrestrial magnetism. For six years, from 1831, Weber worked in close collaboration with Carl Gauss. Weber developed sensitive magnetometers, an electromagnetic telegraph (1833) and other magnetic instruments during this time. His later work (1855) on the ratio between the electrodynamic and electrostatic units of charge proved extremely important and was crucial to James Clerk Maxwell in his electromagnetic theory of light. (Weber found the ratio was 3.1074 x 108 m/sec but failed to take any notice of the fact that this was close to the speed of light.) Weber's later years were devoted to work in electrodynamics and the electrical structure of matter. The magnetic unit, weber, is named after him. |
