威廉·韦伯Wilhelm Eduard Weber

韦伯的父亲是Michael Weber，他从1789年到1814年担任维滕贝格大学的神学教授。Michael Weber和妻子有十三个孩子，但只有四个兄弟和一个姐妹活到高龄。兄弟中最年长的成为教会牧师，而另外三个兄弟都成了科学家。在这三个科学家兄弟中，恩斯特海因里希·马丁·韦伯（生于1795年6月24日）是长子，本传记的主人公威廉·韦伯次之，韦伯Friedrich Weber（生于1806年）最小。全家住在维滕贝格城堡街上医学与自然史教授克里斯蒂安·奥古斯特·朗古特的房子里。同住在这所房子里的还有恩斯特·弗洛伦斯·弗里德里希·克拉尼，一位因声与振动研究而闻名的物理学家。他使兄弟俩对物理学产生了浓厚的兴趣。

1806年，拿破仑在其权力鼎盛时期征服了萨克森，并将其变为一个王国。萨克森的人们总体上，尤其是维滕贝格的人们，成为拿破仑的坚定支持者。法国人因担心普鲁士人的进攻，于1813年加强了维滕贝格的防御工事。然而普鲁士人确实发动了进攻，结果Langguth的房子被毁。韦伯一家于1814年离开维滕贝格，此前该城落入普鲁士人之手，大学也被关闭。他们搬到哈雷，在那里Michael Weber成为神学教授。维滕贝格大学和哈雷大学于1817年正式合并。韦伯在维滕贝格居住期间由父亲在家教育，但搬到哈雷后，他被送到那里的文理中学。1821年，韦伯十七岁，在弗兰克学院学习，准备进入哈雷大学。他的兄弟恩斯特当时二十六岁，作为莱比锡大学的教授从事生理学研究，但韦伯已经足够先进，能够与他的兄弟合作。他们在进行水和声波的实验时，对液体的流动进行了彻底的研究。恩斯特的研究涉及循环力学，因此他对动脉的力学特性感兴趣。这促使兄弟俩用弹性管进行流体流动实验。他们联合出版了一部575页的专著Wellenlehre auf Experimente gegründet Ⓣ（基于实验的波理论）（1825年），其中阐述了流体动力学的基本定律。两兄弟将这部著作献给Chladni，他在他们小时候教过他们物理学。Dolbear解释了这部重要论著的意义[11]：-

这里首次公布的发现之一是，当有前进波时，液体表面的粒子都在波传播方向的平面内沿垂直圆周旋转，而较低处的粒子则沿椭圆运动，其垂直轴随着粒子越深而越来越小。

韦伯于1822年进入哈雷大学，在那里他受到物理学家Johann S C Schweigger和数学家约翰·弗里德里希·普法夫的教导和强烈影响。他在Schweigger的指导下撰写了关于簧风琴管理论的博士论文，并于1826年提交给哈雷大学。之后，他在完成关于簧风琴管作为耦合振荡器与簧片和空气腔声耦合的教授资格论文（Habilitation）论文后，从1827年起在哈雷任教。他在1828年至1830年间在Annalen der Physik und Chemie上发表了一系列关于该主题的论文[1]：-

所处理的课题之一是使用这种耦合在不同吹气强度下保持管音高的恒定性，以及这可能提供改进的音高标准。

他的晋升很快，因为在1827年被任命为Privatdozent后，次年他成为哈雷的自然哲学特别教授。事实上，1828年对韦伯来说是相当重要的一年，因为那年9月，他和他的兄弟恩斯特前往柏林参加德国自然科学家和医生协会的第7次会议。会议由Alexander von Humboldt组织，他对韦伯关于风琴管的演讲印象非常深刻。同样重要的是，卡尔·弗里德里希·高斯也出席了韦伯的讲座，并立即看到了这位年轻物理学家所展现的巨大潜力。此时，卡尔·弗里德里希·高斯对地磁学感兴趣，他意识到韦伯将是一位出色的合作者。他与韦伯交谈，询问如果有职位空缺，他是否有兴趣在哥廷根任职。果然，在托比亚斯·梅耶 Jr去世后，韦伯于1831年4月被授予哥廷根大学物理学教授职位，他立即接受了。随后是韦伯和卡尔·弗里德里希·高斯之间六年的亲密友谊与合作。他很快作为一名讲师赢得了极好的声誉，用实验来说明他的讲座。然而，他觉得学生只有通过做实验才能学习，而不仅仅是观看实验进行，于是他开放了哥廷根的物理实验室供学生使用。

1832年，韦伯和卡尔·弗里德里希·高斯发表了一篇联合论文，首次引入了磁性的绝对测量单位。在这一重大进展之前，测量是用预先校准的磁性仪器进行的，不能恰当地复现。这代表了磁学发展的一个重要进步。韦伯对此工作做出了重大贡献，特别是通过开发灵敏的磁力计和其他磁性仪器。同样重要的是韦伯后来的工作，将这些磁性测量的思想扩展到电学测量，我们将在下面再次提到。这项工作导致詹姆斯·克拉克·麦克斯韦将韦伯的超距作用理论的某些方面引入其电磁场理论，见[10]。韦伯和卡尔·弗里德里希·高斯的另一项具有根本重要性的联合事业是他们在1833年创立了哥廷根磁学联合会。在[7]中讨论了卡尔·弗里德里希·高斯-韦伯电报设计。这条电报是一条由电池操作的3000米长的线路，连接哥廷根的物理实验室和天文台，允许在两个地点同时进行磁观测。卡尔·弗里德里希·高斯和韦伯于1840年联合出版了Atlas Des Erdmagnetismus: Nach Den Elementen Der Theorie Entworfen Ⓣ（地磁图集：来自观测），其中包含使用他们从1836年起组织的磁观测站网络构建的磁图，以关联世界各地的地磁测量。

在这段时间里，韦伯并非所有工作都是与卡尔·弗里德里希·高斯合作的，他还与弟弟韦伯合作，后者是一位解剖学家和生理学家，对人体运动的物理学感兴趣，特别是行走的机制。他们于1836年联合出版了Mechanik der menschlichen GehwerkzengeⓉ（人体运动力学）。韦伯在这些年里还发表了几篇关于声学的重要论文。

政治事件已经对韦伯的生活产生了重大影响，当他还是个孩子时，他的家人就不得不离开维滕贝格。在哥廷根度过了六个成果丰硕的年头之后，事件再次 conspired 改变了他的人生方向。要理解这些事件，我们需要简要回顾一下汉诺威的历史，1814年拿破仑倒台后，汉诺威便处于英国的影响之下。乔治四世于1819年将一部宪法强加给汉诺威，这意味着它被其贵族所支配。1830年的一场起义，就在韦伯搬到哥廷根前不久，导致威廉四世于1833年颁布了一部远为自由和可接受的宪法。然而，威廉四世于1837年6月去世，汉诺威与英国分离，维多利亚成为英国女王，而她的叔叔恩斯特·奥古斯特成为汉诺威国王。作为国王，他废除了1833年的宪法，他认为这部宪法过于自由。在国王采取这一行动两周后，哥廷根的七位教授给国王发了一封抗议信，说明他们作为教授所宣誓的誓言使他们受1833年宪法的约束。韦伯是签署抗议的“哥廷根七君子”之一，其他人中还有《格林童话》的作者雅各布和韦伯格林兄弟。正如《不列颠百科全书》所解释的：-

通过参与这场针对专制权威的抗议，[哥廷根七君子]清楚地展示了学者的公民责任感，同时表明了他們自己的自由信念。

所有七位教授都被解职，其中三人被命令离开汉诺威王国。韦伯虽然被解职，但并未被迫离开哥廷根，他继续在哥廷根磁学联合会工作，没有担任任何大学职位。卡尔·弗里德里希·高斯和冯·洪堡向国王呼吁恢复韦伯的职位，国王同意这样做，条件是韦伯公开撤回抗议信中所表达的观点。然而，韦伯是一个原则性很强的人，他当然不准备发表完全违背自己观点的公开声明，因此他拒绝作出所要求的公开撤回。他在哥廷根没有职位，一直待到1843年，但他确实利用机会在1838年3月至8月间旅行。他首先访问了柏林，然后前往伦敦，在那里他与许多英国科学家进行了有益的交谈，包括约翰·赫歇尔，最后到巴黎，在那里他会见了大多数 leading 法国科学家。1843年，他成为莱比锡的物理学教授，加入了他的兄弟恩斯特和韦伯的行列，他们两人都是该大学的教授。他被任命填补莱比锡的G T Fechner讲席，此前Fechner因失明而不得不退休。在莱比锡，韦伯继续研究安德烈-马里·安培的电学力定律，这项工作他从1832年起就在哥廷根进行。他于1846年发表了Elektrodynamische MassenbestimmungenⓉ（电动力学质量测定）[1]：-

韦伯最伟大的理论贡献出现在《电动力学质量测定》Ⓣ（Elektrodynamische Massenbestimmungen）中，这是从1846年到1878年出版的七部长篇著作，此外还有一部遗作手稿。在第一部中，韦伯介绍了他的测力计，用以检验安德烈-马里·安培的电流元之间的力定律，其精度超过了安德烈-马里·安培，并且还研究了电磁感应。

Dolbear写道[11]：-

韦伯的工作之前，根本不存在电学测量这回事。有的只不过是同类量之间的比较。韦伯展示了如何用时间、长度和质量的单位来表述一个电学量，而不参考任何其他电现象，这是一项新的伟大成就。British Association电学标准委员会采纳了韦伯的工作作为其单位标准的基础。其次，他是最早感受到需要对电磁现象有充分力学概念的人之一，他以数学方式阐明了分子磁体的概念并使之具有一致性，即每个铁分子在构造上都是一个磁体，磁场的各种现象都是由于这些分子的相对位置造成的。

D'Agostino 写道 [10]：-

卡尔·弗里德里希·高斯 和 韦伯 对绝对单位的系统指定，虽被我们的四单位制所掩盖，却使得十九世纪物理定律的解析表述（理论预测的一项基本前提）成为可能……

事实上，韦伯 所成就的是将三条定律结合在一起，即描述两个静止电荷相互作用的定律、安德烈-马里·安培 关于运动电流的定律，以及描述电感的定律。

1848年，一系列反对欧洲君主制的共和起义在法国、德国、意大利和奥地利帝国蔓延。恩斯特·奥古斯特的统治本就动荡不安，国王与人民之间矛盾重重，而1848年的起义迫使他授予汉诺威一部更为自由的新宪法。这为韦伯重返哥廷根打开了大门，但他的职位早在1839年就已被利斯廷填补，尽管后者从未发表过一篇论文。韦伯坚持认为利斯廷应保留该讲席，因此他于1849年以天文台台长的身份重返哥廷根。此时卡尔·弗里德里希·高斯已年过七十，对于这两位科学家来说，要重新开始近二十年前那段极其富有成果的合作，年纪未免太大了。卡尔·弗里德里希·高斯于1855年去世，而在此之前不久，韦伯开始与当时在马堡的Rudolph Hermann阿恩特·科尔劳施合作。他们关于电荷的电动力学单位与静电学单位之比的研究发表于1856年，被证明极其重要，对詹姆斯·克拉克·麦克斯韦的光的电磁理论至关重要。韦伯发现该比值为$3.1074 \times 10^{8}$米/秒，但未能注意到这一数值接近光速。事实上，用“c”表示光速的首次使用就出现在这篇论文中。波恩哈德·黎曼曾担任韦伯的助手十八个月，在实验进行时在场，他确实将光与电动力学现象和电磁现象联系了起来。

韦伯 在哥廷根的晚年致力于电动力学和物质电结构的研究。1850年代访问哥廷根的 托马斯·阿彻·赫斯特 这样描述他：-

他不停地说话，还结结巴巴，旁人除了听别无他事。有时他无缘无故地大笑，让人遗憾无法与他一同笑。

Woodruff 将 韦伯 描述为 [1]：-

……友善、谦逊且不世故。

韦伯 从未结婚，但他的妹妹常帮他管理家务，晚年则由他的侄女承担这一任务。学术工作之外的乐趣包括远足，他喜欢长距离步行。他在哥廷根家中的花园里安详去世，比他的两位科学家兄弟都活得长，比哥哥多活13年，比弟弟多活20年。他与两位著名物理学家 马克斯·普朗克 和 马克斯·玻恩 葬在同一墓园。

由于杰出的成就，韦伯 获得了许多荣誉。他于1850年当选为伦敦 皇家学会 会士，并于1859年获得该学会的科普利奖章。他于1874年3月2日当选为 爱丁堡皇家学会 的名誉会士。他还当选为 美国艺术与科学院 成员。1879年，意大利科学院授予他马泰乌奇奖章。1935年，磁通量单位以他的名字命名为韦伯。实际上，这并不像乍看起来那么简单。电流单位被称为安培，这一术语在1881年由 赫尔曼·冯·亥姆霍兹 提出后逐渐被接受。事实上，大约在那时，韦伯这一术语曾被相当广泛地用于电流单位，但 赫尔曼·冯·亥姆霍兹 与 韦伯 有过多次争执，因此他急于不让如此重要的单位以经常与他意见相左的人命名。特别是，赫尔曼·冯·亥姆霍兹 和 韦伯 对电微粒的质量性质持有不同看法；例如见 [9]。事实上，A E Woodruff 在评论 [6] 时写道：-

正是 韦伯 提出并由其追随者发展的电原子性概念，代表了他对物理学发展的主要概念贡献。

Woodruff 在 [1] 中这样表达这些观点：-

尽管他生前也许最广为人知的是他的力的定律，而该定律随着詹姆斯·克拉克·麦克斯韦场论的胜利而被抛弃。韦伯以其关于电荷的原子论观念以及关于这类电荷在决定物质的电、磁和热性质中的作用的洞见，在物理理论上留下了更为持久的印象。

Wilhelm Weber's father was Michael Weber who was professor of theology at the University of Wittenberg from 1789 to 1814. Michael Weber and his wife had thirteen children but only four brothers and a sister lived to an advanced age. The oldest of the brothers became a minister in the church while the other three brothers all became scientists. Of the three scientist brothers, Ernst Heinrich Weber (born 24 June 1795) was the eldest, Wilhelm Eduard Weber the subject of this biography was the next, and Eduard Friedrich Weber (born 1806) was the youngest. The family lived in the house of Christian August Langguth, the professor of medicine and natural history in Wittenberg, on the Schlossstrasse. A fellow lodger in the house was Ernst Florens Friedrich Chladni, a physicist famed for his work on sound and vibrations. He gave the brothers a deep interest in physics.

Napoleon, at the height of his power in 1806, conquered Saxony and made it a kingdom. People in Saxony in general, and Wittenberg in particular, became a staunch supporters of Napoleon. The French, fearing attack by the Prussians, strengthened Wittenberg's fortifications in 1813. However the Prussians did attack and as a result Langguth's house was destroyed. The Weber family left Wittenberg in 1814 after the city fell to the Prussians and the university was closed. They moved to Halle where Michael Weber became professor of theology. The University of Wittenberg and the University of Halle were formally merged in 1817. Wilhelm had been educated at home by his father while they lived in Wittenberg but after they moved to Halle he was sent to the Gymnasium there. In 1821 Wilhelm Weber was seventeen years old and studying at the Francke Institute preparing to enter the University of Halle. His brother Ernst was at this time twenty-six years old and undertaking research in physiology as a professor at the University of Leipzig, but Wilhelm was advanced enough to be able to cooperate with his brother. They made a thorough study of the flow of liquids when they carried out experiments investigating water and sound waves. Ernst's research involved the mechanics of circulation, so he was interested in the mechanical properties of arteries. This led the brothers to experiment with fluid flow in elastic tubes. They produced a joint publication of a 575-page monograph Wellenlehre auf Experimente gegründet Ⓣ (1825) which formulated the basic laws of hydrodynamics. The two brothers dedicated the work to Chladni who had taught them physics when they were children. Dolbear explains the significance of this important treatise [11]:-

One of the discoveries first made known here was that the particles on the surface of a liquid when there is an advancing wave, all revolve in vertical circles in the plane of the direction of propagation of the wave, while the particles lower down move in ellipses whose vertical axis becomes smaller and smaller as the particles are deeper.

Wilhelm Weber entered the University of Halle in 1822 where he was taught and strongly influenced by the physicist Johann S C Schweigger and the mathematician Johann Friedrich Pfaff. He wrote his doctoral dissertation under Schweigger's supervision on the theory of reed organ pipes and submitted it to Halle in 1826. After that he taught at Halle from 1827 after completing his habilitation thesis on reed organ pipes as coupled oscillators with acoustic coupling of tongue and air cavity. He published a series of papers on this topic between 1828 and 1830 in Annalen der Physik und Chemie [1]:-

One of the subjects treated was the use of this coupling to maintain constancy of pitch of a pipe under different intensities of blowing, and the possibility that this might provide an improved standard of pitch.

His promotion was rapid for after his appointment as a Privatdozent in 1827 he became an Extraordinary Professor of natural philosophy at Halle in the following year. In fact 1828 was quite a significant year for Weber for in September of that year he and his brother Ernst travelled to Berlin to attend the 7th meeting of the Gesellschaft Deutscher Naturforscher und Arzte. The meeting was organised by Alexander von Humboldt who was very impressed with the talk Weber gave on organ pipes. Equally important was the fact that Carl Friedrich Gauss also attended Weber's lecture and immediately saw the tremendous potential displayed by the young physicist. At this time Gauss was interested in geomagnetism and he realised that Weber would make an outstanding co-worker. He spoke to Weber and asked if he would be interested in taking a position in Göttingen if one were to become available. Indeed after the death of Tobias Mayer Jr, Weber was offered a professorship in physics at Göttingen in April 1831 which he immediately accepted. There followed six years of close friendship and collaboration between Weber and Gauss. He soon gained an excellent reputation as a lecturer, illustrating his lectures with experiments. He felt, however, that students could only learn by doing experiments, not simply by watching them carried out, and he opened the physical laboratory at Göttingen for student use.

In 1832 Weber and Gauss published a joint paper which introduced absolute units of measurement of magnetism for the first time. Before this major advance, measurements were made with a pre-calibrated magnetic instrument and were not properly reproducible. This represented an important step forward in the development of magnetism. Weber made major contributions to this work, particularly by developing sensitive magnetometers and other magnetic instruments. Equally important was Weber's later work extending these ideas on magnetic measurements to electrical measurements which we mention again below. This work led to Maxwell's introduction of some aspects of Weber's distant-action theory into his field theory of electricity and magnetism, see [10]. Another joint venture by Weber and Gauss of fundamental importance was their founding of the Göttingen Magnetische Verein in 1833. In [7] the Gauss-Weber telegraph design is discussed. This telegraph was a battery operated line 3000 metres long connecting the Physical Laboratory and the Astronomical Observatory at Göttingen, allowing simultaneous magnetic observations at the two sites. Gauss and Weber jointly published Atlas Des Erdmagnetismus: Nach Den Elementen Der Theorie Entworfen Ⓣ in 1840 which contains magnetic maps constructed using a network of magnetic observatories which they had organized from 1836 onwards to correlate measurements of terrestrial magnetism around the world.

Not all Weber's work during this time was with Gauss, for he also collaborated with his younger brother Eduard, an anatomist and physiologist, who was interested in the physics of human locomotion, particularly the mechanism of walking. They published the joint work Mechanik der menschlichen Gehwerkzenge Ⓣ in 1836. Weber also published several important papers on acoustics during these years.

Political events had already had a major impact on Weber's life when as a boy his family had to leave Wittenberg. After six highly productive years at Göttingen, events again conspired to alter the direction of his life. To understand these events we need to look briefly at the history of Hanover which had come under British influence after the fall of Napoleon in 1814. George IV imposed a constitution on Hanover in 1819 which meant it was dominated by its nobles. An uprising in 1830, shortly before Weber moved to Göttingen, led to William IV introducing a much more liberal and acceptable constitution in 1833. However, William IV died in June 1837 and Hanover separated from Britain with Victoria becoming Queen of Britain while her uncle Ernest Augustus became King of Hanover. As King he repealed the constitution of 1833, which he considered far too liberal. Two weeks after this act by the King, seven professors from Göttingen sent a protest letter to the King explaining that the oath they had taken as professors bound them to the 1833 constitution. Weber was one of the "Göttingen Seven" who signed the protest and among the others were the brothers Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm, the authors of 'Grimm's Fairy Tales'. As explained in Encyclopaedia Britannica:-

Through their part in this protest directed against despotic authority, [the Göttingen Seven] clearly demonstrated the academic's sense of civil responsibilities, manifesting their own liberal convictions at the same time.

All seven professors were dismissed while three of them were ordered to leave the kingdom of Hanover. Weber, although dismissed, was not forced to leave Göttingen and he continued to work at the Göttingen Magnetische Verein without holdig any university position. Gauss and von Humboldt appealed to the King to reinstate Weber and the King agreed to do so provided Weber make a public retraction of the views expressed in the letter of protest. Weber, however, was a man of strong principles and he was certainly not prepared to make a public statement which went totally against his views so he refused to make the required public retraction. He remained at Göttingen without a position until 1843 but he did take the opportunity to travel between March and August 1838. He first visited Berlin before travelling on to London, where he enjoyed useful conversations many English scientists including John Herschel, and finally to Paris where he met most of the leading French scientists. In 1843 he became professor of physics at Leipzig joining his brothers Ernst and Eduard who were both professors at the University. He was appointed to fill G T Fechner's chair at Leipzig after Fechner had to take retirement due to blindness. At Leipzig, Weber continued the work on Ampère's law of electrical force which he had been undertaking in Göttingen from 1832 onwards. He published Elektrodynamische Massenbestimmungen Ⓣ in 1846 [1]:-

Weber's greatest theoretical contributions appeared in the 'Elektrodynamische Massenbestimmungen' Ⓣ, seven long works published from 1846 to 1878, besides a manuscript published posthumously. In the first of these, Weber introduced his dynamometer to test Ampère's law of force between electric current elements, to a degree of precision exceeding Ampère's, and also investigated electromagnetic induction.

Dolbear writes [11 ]:-

Until Weber's work there had been no such thing as electrical measurements. There had been nothing more than comparisons between magnitudes of the same kind. Weber showed how an electrical quantity could be stated in terms of the unit of time, length, and mass, without any reference to other electrical phenomena, and this was a new and great achievement. The British Association Committee on Electrical Standards adopted Weber's work as a basis for their standards of units. Secondly, he was one of the first to feel the necessity for an adequate mechanical conception of electro-magnetic phenomena, and he worked out in a mathematical way, and gave consistency to the idea of molecular magnets, that is, that every molecule of iron is a magnet by constitution, and the various phenomena of the magnetic field are due to the relative positions of these molecules.

D'Agostino writes [10]:-

Gauss and Weber's systematic assignment of absolute units, overshadowed by our four-unit systems, allowed the nineteenth-century analytic formulation of physical laws (a fundamental requisite for theoretical predictions) ...

In fact what Weber achieved was a bringing together of three laws, namely that describing the interactions of two electric charges at rest, Ampère's law for moving electric currents, and the law describing electrical induction.

In 1848 a series of republican revolts against European monarchies spread through France, Germany, Italy, and the Austrian Empire. Ernest Augustus's reign was already a stormy one with trouble between the King and his people and the 1848 revolt forced him to grant Hanover a new much more liberal constitution. The door was thus opened for Weber to return to Göttingen but his position had already been filled by Johann Benedict Listing in 1839 despite the fact that he had never published a paper. Weber insisted that Listing should keep the chair so he returned to Göttingen in 1849 as the Director of the Astronomical Observatory. By this time Gauss was over seventy years of age and rather too old for the two scientists to restart the remarkably fruitful collaboration which had begun nearly twenty years earlier. Gauss died in 1855, and shortly before this Weber began a collaboration with Rudolph Hermann Arndt Kohlrausch who was then at Marburg. Their work on the ratio between the electrodynamic and electrostatic units of charge, published in 1856, proved extremely important and was crucial to Maxwell in his electromagnetic theory of light. Weber found the ratio was $3.1074 \times 10^{8}$m/sec but failed to take any notice of the fact that this was close to the speed of light. In fact the first use of "c" for the speed of light appears in this paper. Bernhard Riemann, who spent eighteen months as Weber's assistant, was present when the experiments were carried out and he did make the connection between light and both electrodynamic and electromagnetic phenomena.

Weber's later years at Göttingen were devoted to work in electrodynamics and the electrical structure of matter. He was described by Thomas Hirst, who visited Göttingen in the 1850s, in the following way:-

He speaks and stutters on unceasingly, one has nothing to do but listen. Sometimes he laughs for no earthly reason, and one feels sorry at being not able to join him.

Woodruff describes Weber as [1]:-

... friendly, modest and unsophisticated.

Weber never married but his sister often helped manage his household and, in later years, his niece carried out this task. His pleasures outside of his academic work included hiking and he loved to walk for long distances. He died peacefully in the garden of his home in Göttingen having outlived both his scientist brothers, the elder by 13 years and the younger by 20 years. He is buried in the same cemetery as two famous physicists Max Planck and Max Born.

For his outstanding achievements Weber received many honours. He was elected to the Royal Society of London in 1850 and awarded their Copley Medal in 1859. He was elected an honorary fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh on 2 March 1874. He was also elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. In 1879 he was awarded the Matteucci Medal by the Italian Society of Sciences. In 1935 the unit of magnetic flux was named the weber in his honour. Actually this is not quite as straightforward as it might at first appear. The unit of electric current is known as the ampere, the term becoming accepted after being proposed by Helmholtz in 1881. In fact around that time the term weber was quite widely used for the unit of electric current but Helmholtz had been in a number of disputes with Weber so he was keen to not have such an important unit named after someone with whom he frequently disagreed. In particular Helmholtz and Weber held different ideas about the nature of the mass of electric corpuscles; see for example [9]. In fact A E Woodruff, in a review of [6], writes:-

It is the concept of electrical atomicity, as developed by Weber and elaborated by his followers, which represents his chief conceptual contribution to the growth of physics.

Writing in [1], Woodruff expresses these views in the following way:-

Although he was perhaps most widely known during his life for his law of force, which was discarded with the triumph of Maxwell's field theory. Weber left his more lasting impression on physical theory with his atomistic conception of electrical charge and his vision of the role of such charges in determining the electrical, magnetic and thermal properties of matter.