Georg Simon Ohm
1789 – 1854
Cologne schoolteacher whose law of resistance was first ridiculed, then immortalized.
A German schoolteacher, Ohm published the law relating voltage, current, and resistance in 1827 — and was ridiculed for it, resigning his post before the work was vindicated with the Royal Society's Copley Medal.
The unit of resistance is his. Ohm's law is the first thing every electrical tool here assumes, and the one relation no electrical engineer ever stops using.
Portrait: a stylized blueprint-line rendering, not a photograph.
Contributions in the toolbox
- 1827
Publishes Die galvanische Kette — V = IR, to initial ridicule.
→ Ohm's Law - 1827
V = IR — the law the divider applies twice.
→ Voltage Divider - 1827
Resistance defined — the quantity being combined.
→ Parallel Resistors