599 



Ohm, should learn the family craft; but having himself acquired 

 an amount of knowledge especially of mathematics unusual in 

 his station of life, which he had found useful to him in his business, 

 he resolved that his boys should have the advantage of a superior 

 education before entering on their future calling, and accordingly, 

 after they had passed through the Elementary School, he sent them 

 to the Gymnasium. With such opportunities and the example of 

 their father, it is not to be wondered at that the talents of the two 

 brothers were rapidly developed. A new career opened to them in 

 1804, when the celebrated mathematician Langsdorf having become 

 acquainted with their extraordinary progress, pronounced the judg- 

 ment that some day they would emulate the brothers Bernouilli. 

 He prepared a certificate to this effect, which induced their father to 

 relinquish his intention of bringing them up to his business, and to 

 allow them thenceforward to pursue a scientific career. 



George Simon Ohm entered the University of Erlangen when he 

 had completed his sixteenth year, but he remained there only 

 eighteen months, leaving it to give instructions in mathematics in 

 Switzerland. In August 1806 he became a mathematical tutor in 

 the Institute of Gottstadt near Nidau, in the Canton of Berne ; after 

 remaining here two years and a half, he went to Neufchatel, where 

 he spent the next two years and a half as a teacher of mathematics. 

 Towards the end of 1811 he returned to Erlangen, and, after taking 

 his degree, entered on an academical course of life as a Privat- 

 doccnt there. This position, however, was merely temporary, as 

 well as a tutorship which he subsequently held at the " Realschule " 

 of Bamberg, which was soon dissolved. 



Ohm attained in 1817, for the first time, a suitable and permanent 

 position as teacher of mathematics in the Great (Jesuits') Gymna- 

 sium at Cologne, where the peculiar faculty he possessed of repre- 

 senting the theory of mathematics in a comprehensive and attractive 

 manner to the youthful understanding was soon recognized. Ohm, 

 however, had an ambition higher than that of remaining a mere 

 mathematical teacher ; his genius led him on to travel into the less 

 trodden regions of science, and to try his powers as an original 

 inquirer. It was not long before he found a congenial sphere of 

 action, and was led to discover the true explanation of the hitherto 

 enigmatical phenomena of the voltaic current. 



