Romfilatelia and Poșta Română introduce into circulation on Tuesday, October 28th this year, an anniversary issue dedicated to a great French scientist under the generic title Personalities of Universal Science. André-Marie Ampère, consisting of a postage stamp and a First Day Cover.
André-Marie Ampère, a renowned physicist and mathematician and founder of electromagnetism, was born in 1775 in Lyon, France.
He was a physics and chemistry teacher at the state high school in Bourg-en-Bresse (1801) and later, a mathematics teacher at the high school in Lyon. He then took the chair of Analysis at the ‘École polytechnique’ in Paris. He became a member of the ‘Académié
des Sciences’ in 1814. He was a self-taught scholar, passionate about mathematics, physics, chemistry, and the natural sciences, to which he added philosophy and sociology.
Ampère carried out studies on the mutual interaction between electric current and the magnetic field, establishing the mathematical expression of the electrodynamic force, which later became a fundamental law of Electrodynamics. He was the first to show that two parallel conducting wires attract or repel each other, depending on the direction of the electric current. He clearly defines the concepts of electric current and electric voltage. His work (published in 1827), Memoir on the Mathematical Theory of Electrodynamic Phenomena, is recognized as the birth certificate of a new science: Electrodynamics.
Ampère was a pioneer of experimental physics, playing a key role in the construction of the galvanometer (a device for measuring electric current). He also developed an electromagnet and, with François Arago, built the first model of a telegraph apparatus in 1820.
The recognition of his outstanding contribution to the creation of the modern science of electricity was the basis for the establishment, as the standard unit of measurement of electricity, of what we define as ampere, alongside the coulomb, volt, ohm, and watt – names given in honor of his contemporaries: Charles Coulomb, Alessandro Volta, George Ohm and James Watt. Moreover, regarded as a scientist with outstanding contributions to the field of electromagnetism, Ampère was among the 72 French scientists chosen in 1889 to be commemorated on the Eiffel Tower.
The French physicist, who founded and named the science of electrodynamics, died in 1836 (aged 61) of pneumonia. He was buried in the city where he lived the last years of his life, Marseille, and his remains were later moved to Montmartre Cemetery in Paris.
The postage stamp, with the face value of Lei 25, depicts a portrait-engraving of the French physicist reproduced from the German encyclopedic publication ‘Meyers Konversations-Lexicon’, 6th edition (1902-1908).
A suggestive graphic, depicting a symbol of the magnetic field and electric current, is printed with UV-visible ink on the surface of the postage stamps.
The design of the First Day Cover reproduces a photographic image of an apparatus used to demonstrate the connection between electric current and the magnetic field.
Romfilatelia extends its thanks to Academician Marius Andruh, Vice President of the Romanian Academy, for the documentary support provided for the development of this postage stamp issue.
