WILHELM WEBER 265 



generally the idea of definite smallest amounts of electricity - 

 elementary electrical quantities - which was already given by 

 Faraday's second law of electrolysis, and Davy's and Ber- 

 zelius' ideas concerning chemical forces. He ascribed to 

 these particles for the first time not only a definite charge, 

 but also a definite mass (inertia), and developed in all essen- 

 tial points the conceptions of the conduction of electricity in 

 metals which were reintroduced more than thirty years later, 

 when they were suggested by the study of cathode rays and 

 the further results of this study. In this connection, also, 

 Weber already gave an explanation of diamagnetism. 



Not a few other results of Weber's long and industrious 

 life cannot here be touched upon, and in the case also of other 

 recent investigators, with whom we are to deal, we shall 

 likewise have to reserve the forefront of our description for 

 that which made the older men of science great and ad- 

 mirable: the discovery or realisation of the fundamentally 

 new. Weber still belongs to the investigators who are 

 well able to bear the application of this measure, and if much 

 has to be passed over in his case and in the case of other more 

 recent men of science, this is only due to the fact that the old 

 investigators left behind so much that was worthy to be 

 further worked upon by the finest minds, but at the same 

 time has so well stood the test of this that nothing essen- 

 tially new has appeared in the process. 



Weber was the fifth child of a theologian in Wittenberg, 

 whose father had been a farmer. He studied science in 

 Halle, and there became a member of the university, and 

 afterwards assistant professor. In the year 1831, he was 

 called to Gottingen at Gauss' suggestion, to the chair of 

 Physics. He there became collaborator with Gauss in the 

 latter's magnetic investigations. In the period of collabora- 

 tion with Gauss came an event which had a strong influence 

 on Weber's life; he belonged to the famous Gottingen Seven. 

 King Ernst August of Hanover in the year 1837 abolished by 



