AMPÈRE, ANDRE-MARIE: (b. Lyons, France, 22 January 1775; d. Marseilles. France, 10 June
1836), mathematics, chemistry, physics.
Ampère's father, Jean-Jacques, was a merchant of independent means who, soon after his son's
birth, moved the family to the nearby village of Poleymieux, where André-Marie grew up. The house
is today a national museum. Jean-Jacques Ampère had been greatly influenced by the educational
theories of Rousseau and was determined to educate his son along the lines laid down in
Emile. The method he seems to have followed was to expose his son to a considerable library
and let him educate himself as his own tastes dictated. One of the first works Ampère read was
Buffon's Histoire naturelle, which stimulated his lifelong interest in taxonomy. Probably
the most important influence on him was the great Encyclopédie – even thirty years later
he could recite many of the articles from memory. In his father's library he also discovered Antoine
Laurent Thomas's eulogy of Descartes, which convinced him of the nobility of a life in science. It
also introduced him to metaphysics, the one passion he sustained throughout his life.
Almost incidentally Ampère discovered and perfected his mathematical talents. As an infant, he was
fascinated by numbers and taught himself the elements of number theory. Like the young Pascal,
having been forbidden the rigors of geometry because of his tender years, he defied parental
authority and worked out the early books of Euclid by himself.
When the librarian in Lyons informed him that the works by Euler and Bernoulli that he wished to
read were in Latin, Ampère rushed home to learn this language. He soon became adept enough to read
the books that interested him, but continued his studies to the point where he could write quite
acceptable Latin verse.
Ampère's early education was also conducted in a deeply religious atmosphere. His mother, the
former Jeanne Desutières-Sarcey, was a devout woman who saw to it that her son was thoroughly
instructed in the Catholic faith. Throughout his life, Ampère reflected the double heritage of the
Encyclopédie and Catholicism. He was almost constantly assailed by the doubts sown by the
Encyclopedists and, just as constantly, renewed his faith. From this conflict came his concern for
metaphysics, which shaped his approach to science.
Ampère's childhood ended in 1789 with the outbreak of the French Revolution. Although Poleymieux
was a rural backwater, the events in Lyons soon involved the Ampère family. Jean-Jacques was called
upon by his fellow citizens to assume the post of juge de paix, a post with important
police powers. He met the threat of a Jacobin purge head-on by ordering the arrest of Joseph
Chalier, the leading Jacobin of Lyons. Chalier was executed. When Lyons fell to the troops of the
Republic, Jean-Jacques Ampère was tried and guillotined on 23 November 1793. The event struck
André-Marie like a bolt of lightning. The world had always been remote: now it had moved to the
very center of his life, and this sudden confrontation was more than he could immediately bear. For
a year he retreated within himself, not speaking to anyone and trying desperately to understand what
had happened. His contact with the outside world was minimal: only an interest in botany, stimulated
by a reading of Rousseau's letters on the subject, seemed to survive.
It was in this extremely vulnerable emotional state that Ampère met the young lady who was to
become his wife. Julie Carron was somewhat older than Ampère and as a member of a good bourgeois
family must have seen Ampère's suit in a somewhat unfavorable light. Although the Ampères and the
Carrons lived in neighboring villages and shared a common
|