Royal Danish Embassy – Washington, D.C.

Two Very Gifted Brothers
Three Years Abroad
Considerable University Activity
Discovery When Lecturing
Intense Electrotechnics Development
First to produce Pure Aluminum

Hans Christian Ørsted (1777-1851) is one of the most luminous figures in the intellectual life of Denmark. He is principally known as the discoverer of electromagnetism, that is to say the magnetic field of an electric current, but he also had lasting influence on many aspects of Danish culture and society. Thus he was one of the first to appreciate and encourage Hans Christian Andersen when this great Danish writer found the fairy tale as his proper genre.

The romantic breakthrough in Denmark was an immensely stimulating inspiration to Ørsted and he was an avidly engaged participant in this new movement, although he later dissociated himself from romanticism’s highly speculative and somewhat remote features. He was the actual founder of physical studies at Copenhagen University, and it was on his initiative that the Polytechnical Institute, now the Technical University of Denmark, was established. He appreciated the need to spread knowledge of scientific advance, and created the still extremely active Society for the Dissemination of Natural Science.

By nature he was a kind and exceedingly helpful man, who was a great inspiration to his associates; but although his dealings were always marked by a high degree of consideration he could in crucial situations display great firmness and resolution, never hesitating to advance radical views and opinions. He is one of those figures in Danish history who appear in so noble a cast that the picture of him and his work comes to seem almost too undifferentiated.

Two Very Gifted Brothers

H.C. Ørsted was the son of Søren Christian Ørsted, a pharmacist of Rudkøbing on the island of Langeland, and with his brother, Anders Sandøe Ørsted (1778-1860), later professor of jurisprudence and politician, received privately and by self-study an education which enabled them to travel in 1793 to Copenhagen and there, the next year, pass the university entrance examination, to which they had submitted themselves.

Both brothers early showed signs of exceptional gifts and set themselves great aims for their future. H.C. Ørsted’s interest in science was early aroused by working in his father’s pharmacy, and so it was natural that he should train for pharmacy, as there were no possibilities of studying physics and chemistry at Copenhagen University then; it was he who afterwards provided them. As early as 1797, he passed the pharmaceutical examination with distinction, and already in 1796 and 1797 succeeded in doing the prize papers in both aesthetics and medicine, in each case winning the prize.

Three Years Abroad

In the summer of 1801 he was awarded a travel scholarship, which together with a public grant enabled him to spend three years abroad, visiting both Germany and France. On these travels he came into close contact with the German physicist Ritter, who strongly influenced him. It was in the early days of the philosophy of nature and romanticism, and under Ritter’s influence Ørsted undeniably adopted a somewhat uncritical approach to the new currents, which in a book he published – to some extent, though only for a time, damaged his standing among his colleagues.

Later, however, he disengaged himself from this uncritically accepted influence, and it is reasonable to emphasize that if romanticism and its relationship to the philosophy of nature meant a very powerful inspiration to Ørsted it would be wrong to regard him as solely a child of romanticism. He was also to a considerable extent rooted in the period before, in the philosophy of Kant, and particularly in the belief of the Enlightenment in the value and possibility of human advancement through rational education. True, he felt attracted by Schelling’s philosophy of nature with its quest for unity, but in time he became more and more critical of purely speculative philosophy, reproaching it for failing to base itself on reality.

Considerable University Activity

Returning home, he was appointed to lecture on physics at Copenhagen University, and considerable university activity developed from this, leading finally to thorough and systematic teaching of physics and chemistry, together with the establishment of relatively good laboratory conditions.

In the years 1812 and 1813 Ørsted went on his second major foreign journey to Germany, Belgium and France. Although still under the influence of the speculative philosophy of nature, he admitted that he had meanwhile moved away from its views and that it was not possible for him to achieve a profitable exchange of ideas between himself and Fichte and Schleiermacher.

Back home, he married Birgitte Ballum, with whom he lived a harmonious and very happy married life, having five daughters and three sons.

Discovery When Lecturing

After some years of activity occupied with multifarious pursuits there occurred in 1820 – “the happiest year of my life” – the great event which at one stroke made him known all over the world: the discovery of electromagnetism. He himself told the story of how, one day in April when he was pondering on a lecture about electricity and magnetism in which he would employ a new electric battery, it occurred to him that just as light and heat radiate from all sides of a live wire, so, conceivably, magnetic action might similarly be emitted from the wire. 
He resolved to investigate this by inserting a platinum filament in the wire between the battery terminals and causing them to glow by means of the current, meanwhile holding it over a small compass needle in the line of it. There was no time for testing the theory before the lecture; but during it he became so convinced of the idea’s correctness that he at once carried out the experiment, and found that the needle was deflected, that it was deflected in the opposite direction when the current was reversed, and that it was without effect when the needle was held at right angles to the wire.

As the effect was only slight, since so was the current, he put off further research for three months in order to have plenty of time for investigating the phenomenon. Then, in July, he commenced a very extensive study, resulting in a paper that was quickly translated into the major languages in leading scientific journals.

Intense Electrotechnics Development

Ørsted’s discovery at once aroused great interest, leading to intense scientific development and consequent great technical results. Before long Ampere had arrived at the mathematical laws of electromagnetism, and in 1830 Faraday, closely following developments after Ørsted’s great discovery, discovered electromagnetic induction; that is to say, that electric currents are set up when closed wires are moved in relation to magnetic fields, or vice versa. The foundation had thus been laid for the intensive development of electrotechnology. Ørsted had already discovered that not only is a magnetic needle deflected by the electric current, but that the live electric wire is also deflected in a magnetic field, thus laying the foundation for the construction of the electric motor.

It was Ørsted’s great good fortune that, of all people, he should be the one to discover the connection between magnetism and electricity, absorbed as he had been since his earliest youth by ideas about the unity of nature.

In 1822-23, Ørsted went on his third major journey abroad, to Germany, England and France, with royal support and money for buying instruments. It was France which specially attracted him now, but on the journey he conceived the idea of the above-mentioned Society for the Dissemination of Natural Science, on the British model, which contained the germ for the idea of the Polytechnical Institute, established in 1829.

First to Produce Pure Aluminum

These activities engrossed him until his death in 1851, up to which time he was head of the Polytechnical Institute and director of the Society for the Dissemination of Natural Science. But there was time for other work also: absorption in literary affairs, publication of educative and philosophical articles, and participation in current debate. He also found time for scientific work, and among other things was the first to produce pure aluminum, a fact not, however, immediately recognized, while he also 
carried out a series of original and accurate experiments on the compressibility of fluids.

Finally, there remains to be mentioned Ørsted’s great interest in the Danish language, to which he contributed a number of innovations, such as the words brint and ilt, for hydrogen and oxygen.

Hans Christian Ørsted remains for Danes one of the most harmonious personalities in Danish cultural life. In him were combined a distinctive scientific genius and a wide-ranging cultural and practical activity that contributed decisively to transforming Danish society during the transition to the age of science and industrialism, yet with the preservation of Danish cultural tradition.

Back to top