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^ Miscellaneous Intelligence. 147 



-^The 



of electro-magnetism, has been added to the long list of those whom 

 continental science has recently been called upon to mourn. It has 

 been truly said of him, that the position which he occupied in Denmark 

 was very similar to that of Humboldt in Germany. He was the phi- 

 losopher, the scientist, the scholar, — the kind friend of youth, the judi- 

 cious counselor of age, — one whom monarch and citizen alike de- 

 lighted to honor. Oersted was born 1777, August 14, in Rudkjobing, 

 a small town on the Danish island of Langeland. The poverty of his 

 parents and the isolation of their little village were alike unfavorable 

 to the attainment of a thorough education. But Oersted, like many of 

 his predecessors in the same path, learned for himself the elements of 

 knowledge, and especially arithmetic, from old schoolbooks which fell 

 in his way, and taught his brother Anders who was a year younger, 

 all that he had thus acquired for himself. And like the brothers Hum- 

 boldt, the brothers Oersted seemed in after life almost to divide between 

 themselves the realm of human knowledge. While in each case one 

 brother followed the paths of actual science and adorned the university 

 and the academy, — the other rose to equal eminence in the other divis- 

 ion of human knowledge, and finally became minister of slate. 



^ Oersted came to Copenhagen in his 18th year, and devoted himself to 

 his studies with intense zeal. His fellow student, Oehlenschlager, after- 

 wards the celebrated poet, was at this time almost the only person who 

 shared his friendship with his brother, and the intimate friendship thus 

 begun continued undiminished and uninterrupted till dissolved by death. 

 In 1799, Oersted published his inaugural dissertation on the'' Ar- 

 chitecture of Natural Metaphysics," {Architeclonik der Naturmeta- 

 physik,) This treatise shows that, even at that period, his mind was 

 deeply imbued with tastes and sentiments similar to those wliich char- 

 acterize the last writings of his life. 



At this time he proposed his new theory of the alkalies, a theory which 

 was afterwards universally adopted. In J800, he was appointed ad- 

 junct in the medical faculty of the University, and began to lecture on 

 chemistry and the philosophy of nature. 



This was the year in which Volta 'discovered the battery which bears 



his name ; setting this discovery, as Moller has admirably said, like a 



J^ilestone at the close of one century and the beginning of the next. 



t Ail Oersted's energies were immediately enlisted for the new field of 



research thus opened, and he immediately delected the true law of the 

 • decomposition of salts. From this time forward he dedicated himself 



solely to the career of an investigator, and in the pursuit of his studies 

 ^ visited almost all parts of northern Europe. 



His subsequent life is well known to the scientific world. In the 

 year 1820 he discovered the magnetic influence of electricity, thus 

 founding the science of Electro-magnetism and in fact firsi opening that 

 new course of research into the mutual relations of-lhe several energies 

 ?f nature, which is still pursued with suc^ brilliant success, yearly lead- 

 ing to more and more astonishing resuhs. Without the discoveries of 

 t)ers{ed, where had been those of Ampere, Arago, Faraday, Seebeck 

 and Melloni? In 1814 he established a Magnetic Observatory at Co- 

 penhagen, but has since that time chiefly devoted himself to those sci- 

 \ ences which spring from the mutual relation of the material and spir- 



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