THE SCIENTIFIC WORK OF GEORGE SIMON OHM. 253 
that the human ear perceives only pendulum-like vibration as a simple 
tone. Every other periodic motion it resolves into a collection of 
pendulum-like vibrations which it then hears in the sound as a series 
of single tones, fundamental and overtones. Ohm arrived at this law 
from mathematical considerations, making use of Fourier’s series; for 
its experimental verification he was compelled to use the well-culti- 
rated ear of a friend, inasmuch as he was himself entirely devoid of 
musical ear. 
Like his law of the current, this law of acoustics received no recog- 
nition from his contemporaries. It was, in fact, opposed by Seebeck, 
one of the most prominent investigators in that field, as being an idea 
too foreign to the accustomed method of presentation. This law of 
Ohm was not accepted until Helmholtz furnished the experimental 
means which enables every even unskilled ear to resolve a sound into 
its simple partial tones; and eight years after Ohm’s death completely 
revolutionized acoustics and the theory of music by that classic work, 
“The Seience of the Perception of Sound,” which is based on Ohm’s 
law. 
In 1827, while Ohm was writing the appendix to his work, ‘‘The 
Galvanic Battery,” certain ideas in regard to the ultimate structure of 
matter were forced upon him. ‘“ There are properties of space filling 
matter which we are accustomed to look upon as belonging to it. 
There are other properties which heretofore we were inclined to look 
upon as the visitors of matter which abide with it from time to time. 
For these properties man has thought out causes if not foreign, at 
least not innate, and they pass as immaterial and yet independent 
things of nature, under the names of light, heat, electricity, ete. It 
must be possible to so conceive the structure of physical bodies that 
along with the properties of the first class, at the same time and neces- 
sarily those of the second shall be given.” This thought appears to 
have been suggested by his broadly designed plan of ‘*Contributions to 
Molecular Physics.” The recognition of the Royal Society gave him 
new courage for the carrying out of this work, but unfortunately it 
remains unfinished. His intention appears to have been, from certain 
definite assumptions concerning the nature, form, size, and mode of action 
of the atom, to deduce, by the aid of analytical mechanics, all the phe- 
nomena above referred to. He desired to create a work that should be 
for the microcosm of the world of atoms, what Newton’s ‘ Principia ” 
had become for the microcosm of heavenly space. Ouly the first vol- 
ume appeared. It was entitled *‘ Elements of Analytical Geometry of 
Space on a System of Oblique Co-ordinates,” and contained only the 
mathematical introductin to the actual problem. A second volume was 
to have contained “the dynamies of the structures of bodies,” and a third 
and fourth to be devoted to the physical investigation itself. 
Toward the end of 1849, in the midst of eager work upon his great 
