André-Marie AMPERE - Rare letter on the Academy of Sciences.

André-Marie AMPERE  (1775.1836)

Autograph letter signed to Mr. Hachette, professor at the Faculty of Sciences.

Three pages in-4°. Autograph address. Collector's stamp on the 3rd ^sheet .

[Paris]. Thursday April 30, 1829

Rare letter from the French scientist evoking his colleague from the Academy of Sciences.

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“My dear and excellent friend, Mr. Frédéric Cuvier having come to see me this morning, I communicated to him the letter that you were kind enough to write to me yesterday , and as we are both extremely keen to take the exams from Versailles with you, we agreed that, in accordance with what you told me in this letter, all three of us would go to Versailles on Thursday evening. I thought that the best thing for us to do was for you to come to dinner that day, as well as Fréderic, with me, at 5 o'clock sharp so that we could be at the Versailles car at 7 o'clock, where I will have had the three seats in the coupe booked for the three of us the day before the day before. A cab, taken at half past six from my house, will take us to the office of the car being held.

Before speaking about this project to Mr. Fréderic Cuvier, I wanted to know if it suited you, although I do not see why you would not be kind enough to approve it, which is why I ask you to mark with a word of response that you will meet with us at my home, at 5 a.m. on Thursday, May 7, that is to say from today in eight, to leave at 6:30 a.m. from my home for Versailles , we will notify the principal when we arrive that we will start the exams in the morning the next day , and we will arrange with him so that all the exams, six in number, can be done in the four sessions on Friday and Saturday. As soon as you have written to me, which I beg you with all the friendship you have for me, that this whole arrangement suits you, I will write to Frédéric to invite him, I am sure in advance of his assent . Please offer to Madame Hachette, and accept for yourself, the assurance of my sincere friendship and the most complete devotion. A. Ampère – Thursday April 30, 1829. I am then reading your descriptive geometry to make the report that I want to send to the minister before our departure for Versailles. »

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Self-taught, Ampère contributed to the development of mathematics by introducing it into physics. He made important discoveries in the field of electromagnetism, building the theoretical foundations and discovering the basics of the electronics of matter. He is also the inventor of many devices and appliances such as the solenoid, the electric telegraph and the electromagnet.

Considered the precursor of the mathematization of physics, and as one of the last universal scientists, Ampère is the creator of the vocabulary of electricity (he invented the terms "current" and "voltage") and his name was given to the international unit of electric current intensity: the Ampere.

His name is among the seventy-two scholars inscribed on the Eiffel Tower.

A Museum is dedicated to him in Poleymieux-au-Mont-d'Or (near Lyon) where he spent his young years.