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Hans Christian Ørsted (; 14 August 1777 – 9 March 1851), sometimes
transliterated Transliteration is a type of conversion of a text from one writing system, script to another that involves swapping Letter (alphabet), letters (thus ''wikt:trans-#Prefix, trans-'' + ''wikt:littera#Latin, liter-'') in predictable ways, such as ...
as Oersted ( ), was a Danish
chemist A chemist (from Greek ''chēm(ía)'' alchemy; replacing ''chymist'' from Medieval Latin ''alchemist'') is a graduated scientist trained in the study of chemistry, or an officially enrolled student in the field. Chemists study the composition of ...
and
physicist A physicist is a scientist who specializes in the field of physics, which encompasses the interactions of matter and energy at all length and time scales in the physical universe. Physicists generally are interested in the root or ultimate cau ...
who discovered that
electric current An electric current is a flow of charged particles, such as electrons or ions, moving through an electrical conductor or space. It is defined as the net rate of flow of electric charge through a surface. The moving particles are called charge c ...
s create
magnetic field A magnetic field (sometimes called B-field) is a physical field that describes the magnetic influence on moving electric charges, electric currents, and magnetic materials. A moving charge in a magnetic field experiences a force perpendicular ...
s. This phenomenon is known as Oersted's law. He also discovered
aluminium Aluminium (or aluminum in North American English) is a chemical element; it has chemical symbol, symbol Al and atomic number 13. It has a density lower than that of other common metals, about one-third that of steel. Aluminium has ...
, a
chemical element A chemical element is a chemical substance whose atoms all have the same number of protons. The number of protons is called the atomic number of that element. For example, oxygen has an atomic number of 8: each oxygen atom has 8 protons in its ...
. A leader of the
Danish Golden Age The Danish Golden Age () covers a period of exceptional creative production in Denmark, especially during the first half of the 19th century.Kulturnet DanmarkGuide to the Danish Golden Age Although Copenhagen had suffered from fires, Battle of Co ...
, Ørsted was a close friend of
Hans Christian Andersen Hans Christian Andersen ( , ; 2 April 1805 – 4 August 1875) was a Danish author. Although a prolific writer of plays, travelogue (literature), travelogues, novels, and poems, he is best remembered for his literary fairy tales. Andersen's fai ...
and the brother of politician and jurist Anders Sandøe Ørsted, who served as
Prime Minister of Denmark The prime minister of Denmark (, , ) is the head of government in the Kingdom of Denmark comprising the three constituent countries: Denmark, Greenland and the Faroe Islands. Before the creation of the modern office, the kingdom did not init ...
from 1853 to 1854.


Early life and studies

Ørsted was born in
Rudkøbing Rudkøbing is a town in Denmark, on the western coast of the island of Langeland. It is the seat of Langeland Municipality, in the Region of Southern Denmark, Southern Denmark Region. The town is located southeast of Svendborg and is connected t ...
in 1777. As a young boy he developed an interest in science while working for his father, who was a pharmacist in the town's pharmacy. He and his brother
Anders Anders is a male name in Scandinavian languages and Fering, Fering North Frisian, an equivalent of the Greek Andreas ("manly") and the English Andrew. It originated from Andres (name), Andres via metathesis (linguistics), metathesis. In Sweden, A ...
received most of their early education through self-study at home, going to Copenhagen in 1793 to take entrance exams for the
University of Copenhagen The University of Copenhagen (, KU) is a public university, public research university in Copenhagen, Copenhagen, Denmark. Founded in 1479, the University of Copenhagen is the second-oldest university in Scandinavia, after Uppsala University. ...
, where both brothers excelled academically. By 1796, Ørsted had been awarded honors for his papers in both
aesthetics Aesthetics (also spelled esthetics) is the branch of philosophy concerned with the nature of beauty and taste (sociology), taste, which in a broad sense incorporates the philosophy of art.Slater, B. H.Aesthetics ''Internet Encyclopedia of Ph ...
and
physics Physics is the scientific study of matter, its Elementary particle, fundamental constituents, its motion and behavior through space and time, and the related entities of energy and force. "Physical science is that department of knowledge whi ...
. He earned his doctorate in 1799 for a dissertation based on the works of Kant entitled ''The Architectonics of Natural Metaphysics''. In 1800,
Alessandro Volta Alessandro Giuseppe Antonio Anastasio Volta (, ; ; 18 February 1745 – 5 March 1827) was an Italian chemist and physicist who was a pioneer of electricity and Power (physics), power, and is credited as the inventor of the electric battery a ...
reported his invention of the voltaic pile, which inspired Ørsted to investigate the nature of electricity and to conduct his first electrical experiments. In 1801, Ørsted received a travel
scholarship A scholarship is a form of Student financial aid, financial aid awarded to students for further education. Generally, scholarships are awarded based on a set of criteria such as academic merit, Multiculturalism, diversity and inclusion, athleti ...
and public grant which enabled him to spend three years traveling across Europe. He toured science headquarters throughout the continent, including in Berlin and Paris. In Germany, Ørsted met Johann Wilhelm Ritter, a physicist who believed there was a connection between
electricity Electricity is the set of physical phenomena associated with the presence and motion of matter possessing an electric charge. Electricity is related to magnetism, both being part of the phenomenon of electromagnetism, as described by Maxwel ...
and
magnetism Magnetism is the class of physical attributes that occur through a magnetic field, which allows objects to attract or repel each other. Because both electric currents and magnetic moments of elementary particles give rise to a magnetic field, ...
. This idea made sense to Ørsted as he subscribed to Kantian thought regarding the unity of nature. Ørsted's conversations with Ritter drew him into the study of physics. He became a professor at the
University of Copenhagen The University of Copenhagen (, KU) is a public university, public research university in Copenhagen, Copenhagen, Denmark. Founded in 1479, the University of Copenhagen is the second-oldest university in Scandinavia, after Uppsala University. ...
in 1806 and continued research on electric currents and acoustics. Under his guidance the university developed a comprehensive physics and chemistry program and established new laboratories. Ørsted welcomed William Christopher Zeise to his family home in autumn 1806. He granted Zeise a position as his lecturing assistant and took the young chemist under his tutelage. In 1812, Ørsted again visited Germany and France after publishing and (1811). Ørsted was the first modern thinker to explicitly describe and name the
thought experiment A thought experiment is an imaginary scenario that is meant to elucidate or test an argument or theory. It is often an experiment that would be hard, impossible, or unethical to actually perform. It can also be an abstract hypothetical that is ...
. He used the Latin-German term circa 1812 and the German term in 1820. In 1819 Ørsted was the first to extract piperine and subsequently name it. He extracted it from '' Piper nigrum'', the plant from which both white and black pepper comes from. Ørsted designed a new type of
piezometer Pressure measurement is the measurement of an applied force by a fluid (liquid or gas) on a surface. Pressure is typically measured in unit of measurement, units of force per unit of surface area. Many techniques have been developed for the me ...
to measure the compressibility of liquids in 1822.


Electromagnetism

In 1820, Ørsted published his discovery that a
compass A compass is a device that shows the cardinal directions used for navigation and geographic orientation. It commonly consists of a magnetized needle or other element, such as a compass card or compass rose, which can pivot to align itself with No ...
needle was deflected from magnetic north by a nearby electric current, confirming a direct relationship between electricity and magnetism. The often reported story that Ørsted made this discovery incidentally during a lecture is a myth. He had, in fact, been looking for a connection between electricity and magnetism since 1818, but was quite confused by the results he was obtaining. His initial interpretation was that magnetic effects radiate from all sides of a wire carrying an electric current, as do light and heat. Three months later, he began more intensive investigations and soon thereafter published his findings, showing that an electric current produces a circular magnetic field as it flows through a wire. For his discovery, the
Royal Society of London The Royal Society, formally The Royal Society of London for Improving Natural Knowledge, is a learned society and the United Kingdom's national academy of sciences. The society fulfils a number of roles: promoting science and its benefits, r ...
awarded Ørsted the
Copley Medal The Copley Medal is the most prestigious award of the Royal Society of the United Kingdom, conferred "for sustained, outstanding achievements in any field of science". The award alternates between the physical sciences or mathematics and the bio ...
in 1820 and the French Academy granted him 3,000
francs The franc is any of various units of currency. One franc is typically divided into 100 centimes. The name is said to derive from the Latin inscription ''francorum rex'' ( King of the Franks) used on early French coins and until the 18th centur ...
. Ørsted's findings stirred much research into electrodynamics throughout the scientific community, influencing French physicist André-Marie Ampère's developments of a single mathematical formula to represent the magnetic forces between current-carrying conductors. Ørsted's work also represented a major step toward a unified concept of energy. The Ørsted effect brought about a communications revolution due to its application to the
electric telegraph Electrical telegraphy is Point-to-point (telecommunications), point-to-point distance communicating via sending electric signals over wire, a system primarily used from the 1840s until the late 20th century. It was the first electrical telecom ...
. The possibility of such a telegraph was suggested almost immediately by mathematician
Pierre-Simon Laplace Pierre-Simon, Marquis de Laplace (; ; 23 March 1749 â€“ 5 March 1827) was a French polymath, a scholar whose work has been instrumental in the fields of physics, astronomy, mathematics, engineering, statistics, and philosophy. He summariz ...
and Ampère presented a paper based on Laplace's idea the same year as Ørsted's discovery. However, it was almost two decades before it became a commercial reality.


Later years

Ørsted was elected a
Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh Fellowship of the Royal Society of Edinburgh (FRSE) is an award granted to individuals that the Royal Society of Edinburgh, Scotland's national academy of science and Literature, letters, judged to be "eminently distinguished in their subject". ...
in March 1821, a Foreign Member of the Royal Society of London in April 1821, a foreign member of the
Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences () is one of the Swedish Royal Academies, royal academies of Sweden. Founded on 2 June 1739, it is an independent, non-governmental scientific organization that takes special responsibility for promoting nat ...
in 1822, a member of the
American Philosophical Society The American Philosophical Society (APS) is an American scholarly organization and learned society founded in 1743 in Philadelphia that promotes knowledge in the humanities and natural sciences through research, professional meetings, publicat ...
in 1829, and a Foreign Honorary Member of the
American Academy of Arts and Sciences The American Academy of Arts and Sciences (The Academy) is one of the oldest learned societies in the United States. It was founded in 1780 during the American Revolution by John Adams, John Hancock, James Bowdoin, Andrew Oliver, and other ...
in 1849. He founded the (Society for the Dissemination of Natural Science, SNU) in 1824. He was also the founder of predecessor organizations which eventually became the Danish Meteorological Institute and the Danish Patent and Trademark Office. In 1829, Ørsted founded (College of Advanced Technology), which was later renamed the Technical University of Denmark (DTU). In 1824, Ørsted made a significant contribution to
chemistry Chemistry is the scientific study of the properties and behavior of matter. It is a physical science within the natural sciences that studies the chemical elements that make up matter and chemical compound, compounds made of atoms, molecules a ...
by being the first person to successfully produce
aluminium Aluminium (or aluminum in North American English) is a chemical element; it has chemical symbol, symbol Al and atomic number 13. It has a density lower than that of other common metals, about one-third that of steel. Aluminium has ...
in its metallic state, albeit in a less-than-pure form. In 1808,
Humphry Davy Sir Humphry Davy, 1st Baronet (17 December 177829 May 1829) was a British chemist and inventor who invented the Davy lamp and a very early form of arc lamp. He is also remembered for isolating, by using electricity, several Chemical element, e ...
had predicted the existence of the metal which he gave the name of ''alumium''. However his attempts to isolate it using electrolysis processes were unsuccessful; the closest he came was an aluminium-iron alloy. Ørsted succeeded in isolating the metallic form by reacting
aluminium chloride Aluminium chloride, also known as aluminium trichloride, is an inorganic compound with the formula . It forms a hexahydrate with the formula , containing six water molecules of hydration. Both the anhydrous form and the hexahydrate are col ...
with
potassium Potassium is a chemical element; it has Symbol (chemistry), symbol K (from Neo-Latin ) and atomic number19. It is a silvery white metal that is soft enough to easily cut with a knife. Potassium metal reacts rapidly with atmospheric oxygen to ...
amalgam (an alloy of potassium and mercury) and then boiling away the mercury, which left small "chunks" of metal that he described as appearing similar to tin. He presented his results and a sample of the metal at meetings of the Danish Academy of Sciences in early 1825, but otherwise appears to have considered his discovery to be of limited importance. This ambivalence, coupled with the limited audience for the Danish Academy's journal in which the results had been published, meant that the discovery went mostly unnoticed by the wider scientific community at the time. Busy with other work, in 1827 Ørsted gave his friend, the German chemist Friedrich Wöhler, permission to take over the research. Wöhler was able to produce approximately of aluminium powder soon thereafter, using a process of his own design, before finally, in 1845, isolating a quantity of solid metal sufficient for him to describe some of its physical properties. Ørsted died in Copenhagen in 1851, aged 73, and was buried there in the Assistens Cemetery.


Legacy

The centimetre-gram-second system (CGS) unit of magnetic induction ( oersted) is named for his contributions to the field of electromagnetism. The company Danish Oil and Natural Gas (DONG), was renamed Ørsted to signal its transition from
fossil fuels A fossil fuel is a flammable carbon compound- or hydrocarbon-containing material formed naturally in the Earth's crust from the buried remains of prehistoric organisms (animals, plants or microplanktons), a process that occurs within geologica ...
to becoming one the world's leading developers and operators of offshore windfarms. The first Danish satellite, launched in 1999, was named after Ørsted.


Toponymy

The Ørsted Park in Copenhagen was named after Ørsted and his brother in 1879. The streets in
Frederiksberg Frederiksberg () is a part of the Capital Region of Denmark. It is an independent municipality, Frederiksberg Municipality, separate from Copenhagen Municipality, but both are a part of the region of Copenhagen. It occupies an area of less tha ...
and in Galten are also named after him. The buildings that are home to the Department of Chemistry and the Institute for Mathematical Sciences at the
University of Copenhagen The University of Copenhagen (, KU) is a public university, public research university in Copenhagen, Copenhagen, Denmark. Founded in 1479, the University of Copenhagen is the second-oldest university in Scandinavia, after Uppsala University. ...
's North Campus are named the H.C. Ørsted Institute, after him. A dormitory named is located in
Odense Odense ( , , ) is the third largest city in Denmark (after Copenhagen and Aarhus) and the largest city on the island of Funen. As of 1 January 2025, the city proper had a population of 185,480 while Odense Municipality had a population of 210, ...
.


Monuments and memorials

A statue of Hans Christian Ørsted was installed in the Ørsted Park in 1880. A commemorative plaque is located above the gate on the building in where he lived and worked. In 1885, a statue of Ørsted was installed in the
Oxford University Museum of Natural History The Oxford University Museum of Natural History (OUMNH) is a museum displaying many of the University of Oxford's natural history specimens, located on Parks Road in Oxford, England. It also contains a lecture theatre which is used by the univers ...
. Ørsted's likeness has appeared twice on Danish banknotes; for the first time on 500kroner notes issued in 1875, and for the second time on 100kroner notes issued between 1962 and 1974.


Awards and lectures

Two medals are awarded in Ørsted's name: the H. C. Ørsted Medal for Danish scientists, awarded by the Danish Society for the Dissemination of Natural Science (SNU), as founded by Ørsted, and the Oersted Medal for notable contributions in the teaching of physics in America, awarded by American Association of Physics Teachers. The Technical University of Denmark hosts the H. C. Ørsted Lecture series for prominent and engaging researchers from around the world.


Works

Ørsted was a published poet, as well as scientist. His poetry series ("The Airship") was inspired by the balloon flights of fellow physicist and stage magician Étienne-Gaspard Robert. * In 1850, shortly before his death, he submitted for publication a two-volume collection of philosophical articles in German under the title ("The Soul in Nature"). It was translated into English and published in one volume in 1852, the year after his death. * ** Other works: * * * * * * * * **Volume I
/span>, containing correspondence with Jöns Jacob Berzelius, Christopher Hansteen, and Christian Samuel Weiss. **Volume II
/span>, containing correspondence with Johann Wilhelm Ritter and numerous others, including
Michael Faraday Michael Faraday (; 22 September 1791 – 25 August 1867) was an English chemist and physicist who contributed to the study of electrochemistry and electromagnetism. His main discoveries include the principles underlying electromagnetic inducti ...
and
Carl Friedrich Gauss Johann Carl Friedrich Gauss (; ; ; 30 April 177723 February 1855) was a German mathematician, astronomer, geodesist, and physicist, who contributed to many fields in mathematics and science. He was director of the Göttingen Observatory and ...
. A significant number of Ørsted's papers were made available in English for the first time in a compilation published in 1998: *


See also

* History of aluminium *
James Clerk Maxwell James Clerk Maxwell (13 June 1831 â€“ 5 November 1879) was a Scottish physicist and mathematician who was responsible for the classical theory of electromagnetic radiation, which was the first theory to describe electricity, magnetism an ...
*
Michael Faraday Michael Faraday (; 22 September 1791 – 25 August 1867) was an English chemist and physicist who contributed to the study of electrochemistry and electromagnetism. His main discoveries include the principles underlying electromagnetic inducti ...
* Gian Domenico Romagnosi, who also observed an electrostatic attraction of a compass needle.


Notes


References


Further reading

* * * * **''Abridged in'' * * *


External links

* * Physics Tree
Hans Christian Ørsted Details

Interactive Java Tutorial on Oersted's Compass Experiment
National High Magnetic Field Laboratory * {{DEFAULTSORT:Orsted, Hans Christian 1777 births 1851 deaths 19th-century Danish physicists People from Langeland Municipality Fellows of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences Danish chemists Discoverers of chemical elements Independent scientists Recipients of the Copley Medal University of Copenhagen alumni Members of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences People associated with electricity 18th-century Danish people 19th-century Danish people Foreign members of the Royal Society Fellows of the Royal Society of Edinburgh Recipients of the Pour le Mérite (civil class) Magneticians 19th-century chemists Aluminium Rectors of the University of Copenhagen Pantheists Articles containing video clips