economic and social background, marriage seemed impossible. At twenty-two, Ampère had only a small 
patrimony and no trade or other special skill. He was also homely and rustic, characteristics that 
were hardly likely to attract someone accustomed to the society and usages of Lyons. Ampère's 
courtship, carefully documented in his journal, reveals an essential aspect of his character: he was 
an incurable romantic whose emotional life was both intense and simple. Having lost his heart to 
Julie, he had no choice but to pursue her until she finally consented to marry him. His joy, like 
his despair at the death of his father, was immoderate. So, in his science, Ampère was possessed by 
his own enthusiasm. He never laid out a course of experiments or line of thought: there would be a 
brilliant flash of insight that he would pursue feverishly to its conclusion. 

On 7 August 1799 Ampère and Julie were wed. The next four years were the happiest of Ampère's 
life. At first he was able to make a modest living as a mathematics teacher in Lyons, where on 12 
August 1800 his son, Jean-Jacques, was born. In February 1802 Ampère left Lyons to become professor 
of physics and chemistry at the école centrale of Bourg-en-Bresse, a position that 
provided him with more money and, more important, with the opportunity to prepare himself for a post 
in the new lycée that Napoleon intended to establish at Lyons. In April of that year he 
began work on an original paper on probability theory that, he was convinced, would make his 
reputation. Thus, everything concurred to make him feel the happiest of men. Then tragedy struck. 
Julie had been ill since the birth of their son, and on 13 July 1803 she died. Ampère was 
inconsolable, and began to cast about desperately for some way to leave Lyons and all its memories. 

On the strength of his paper on probability, he was named répétiteur in mathematics at 
the Ecole Polytechnique in Paris. Again his emotional state was extreme, and again he fell victim to 
it. Bored by his work at the Ecole Polytechnique, lonely in a strange and sophisticated city, 
Ampère sought human companionship and was drawn into a family that appeared to offer him the 
emotional warmth he so desperately craved. On 1 August 1806 he married Jeanne Potot. The marriage 
began under inauspicious circumstances: his father-in-law had swindled him out of his patrimony and 
his wife had indicated that she was uninterested in bearing children. The marriage was a catastrophe 
from the very beginning. After the birth of a daughter, Albine, his wife and mother-in-law made life 
so unbearable for Ampère that he realized that his only recourse was a divorce. Albine joined 
Jean-Jacques in Ampère's household, now presided over by his mother and his aunt, who had come to 
Paris from Poleymieux. 

In 1808 Ampère was named inspector general of the newly formed university system, a post he held, 
except for a few years in the 1820’s, until his death. On 28 November 1814 he was named a member 
of the class of mathematics in the Institut Impérial. In September 1819 he was authorized to offer 
a course in philosophy at the University of Paris, and in 1820 he was named assistant professor 
(professeur suppléant) of astronomy. In August 1824 Ampère was elected to the chair of 
experimental physics at the Collège de France. 
During these years, Ampère's domestic life continued in turmoil. His son, for whom he had great 
hopes, fell under the spell of Mme Récamier, one of the great beauties of the Empire, and for 
twenty years was content to be in her entourage. His daughter, Albine, married an army officer who 
turned out to be a drunkard and a near maniac. There was, too, a constant anxiety about money. In 
1836 Ampère's health failed and he died, alone, while on an inspection tour in Marseilles. 

Ampère's personal misery had an important effect on his intellectual development. His deep 
religious faith was undoubtedly strengthened by the almost constant series of catastrophes with 
which he was afflicted. Each successive tragedy also reinforced his desire for absolute certainty in 
some area of his life. His son later remarked on this characteristic of his father's approach: he 
was never content with probabilities but always sought Truth. It is no coincidence that his first 
mathematical paper, "Des considérations sur la théorie mathématique du jeu" (1802), proved that a 
single player inevitably would lose in a game of chance if he were opposed by a group whose 
financial resources were infinitely larger than his own. The outcome was certain. 
In science Ampère's search for certainty and the exigencies of his faith led him to devise a 
philosophy that determined the form of his scientific research. The dominant philosophy in France in 
the early years of the nineteenth century was that of the Abbé de Condillac and his disciples, 
dubbed Idéologues by Napoleon. It maintained that only sensations were real, thus leaving 
both God and the existence of an objective world open to doubt. Such a position was abhorrent to 
Ampère, and he cast about for an alternative view. He was one of the earliest Frenchmen to discover 
the works of Immanuel Kant. Although Kant's philosophy made it possible to retain one's religious 
faith, Ampère felt that his treatment of space, time, and causality implied the doubtful existence 
of an objective reality at a fundamental level.