Georg Ohm

Georg Simon Ohm was born on 16 March 1789 in Germany and worked as a school teacher while pursuing research on the side. He turned his attention to the electrochemical cell, a recent invention by Italian scientist Alessandro Volta, and built his own experimental equipment to probe how electricity moved through conductors. Through painstaking measurement, Ohm discovered a direct proportionality between the potential difference applied across a conductor and the current that flowed - a relationship now taught in every physics classroom as Ohm's law. He died on 6 July 1854, his name immortalized in the unit of electrical resistance.