MEMOIR OF OERSTED. 



BY C. M. kUE DE BEAUMONT,* PERPETUAL SECRETARY OF THE FRENCH ACADEMY OF 



SCIENCES. 



{^Translated for the Smithsonian Institution by C, A. Alexander,'\ 



Science, like nature, is one ; tlie frontiers of states, the limits of populations, 

 arrest not its propagation. In all civilized countries men calculate with the 

 same figures, measure with the same instruments, avail themselves of the same 

 classifications. Scientific bodies animated by a common spirit collect, by analo- 

 gous means, the results of the general labor ; and all these associations, to give 

 a higher sanction to their mutual collaboration, have desired that the most 

 eminent and celebrated of the savants of foreign countries should constitute a 

 part of their oflicial list. 



Among the illustrious persons on whom the Academy has successively con- 

 ferred the title, so justly coveted, of one of its eight foreign associates, few have 

 better justified the distinction than he to whom we owe the knowledge that the 

 mariner's compass and the lightning conductor present only different effects of 

 identically the same physical agent. 



Jean-Christian Oerstedt was l)orn August 14, 1777, at Rudkjobing, in the 

 island of Langeland, one of the smallest of the archipelago of Denmark. His 

 father exercised the profession of apothecary, and, although the town of Rudk- 

 jobing then counted less than 1,000 inhabitants, he had full occupation. For 

 fear that the young Christian should not be properly looked after in the paternal 

 dwelling, he yvassent everyday to the house of a wig-maker, whose wife enjoyed 

 the confidence of his parents. A brother, one year younger, who became in after 

 life the celebrated jurisconsult Andre Sandoe Oersted, acccompanied him thither 

 the following year. The wig-maker and his wife formed a warm attachment for 

 the two brothers. The wife taught them to read ; the husband instructed them 

 in German, which was his mother tongue. The pupils made rapid progress, 

 owing, perhaps, in reality more to a happy natural aptitude than to any talent 

 in the teachers, but which sufficed to induce many other families to send their 

 own children likewise to this improvised school where knowledge w"as imparted 

 so quickly and so well. The wig-maker, transformed into schoolmaster, daily 

 read to his pupils some pages of a German Bible, which w^as thus perused from 

 beginning to end, and afterwards, in great part, read over anew. It was the 

 daily task of the young Christian to translate word l»y w^ord into Danish what 

 had been read in German, and this exercise so far profited him that at the age 

 of seven years he often embarrassed by his citations those who sought to put his 

 'sagacity to the test; whence the gossips of the vicinage .used to say of him, 

 This child ivill not live; he has too much smartness ! 



* Head at the annual public sitting of the Academy, December 29, 1862. 



1 1 write the name of Oersted as it has always been written in the publications of the 

 Academy. In this the German orthography has been followed, while it would perhaps have 

 been preferable to conform. to the Danish orthography, in which the name is wrilten Orsted, 

 or without the majuscule Orsted. In Denmark it is pronounced Eursted, which is also the 

 German pronunciation of the word Otrsied, whence we are wrong in habitually pronouncing 

 it as if it were written Erstcd. 



