Early years Weber was born in Schlossstrasse in
Wittenberg, where his father, Michael Weber, was Professor of
Theology at the local university. The building in which they lived had previously been the home of
Abraham Vater. Wilhelm was the second of three brothers, all of whom were distinguished by an aptitude for science. After the
dissolution of the University of Wittenberg in 1817, his father was transferred to the university in
Halle. Wilhelm had received his first lessons from his father, but was now sent to the Orphan Asylum and Grammar School in Halle. After that he entered the university and devoted himself to
natural philosophy. He distinguished himself so much in his classes, and by original work, that after taking his degree of Doctor and becoming a
Privatdozent, he was appointed as Professor Extraordinarius of Natural Philosophy at Halle.
Career In 1831, on the recommendation of
Carl Friedrich Gauss, he was hired by the
University of Göttingen as professor of physics, at the age of twenty-seven. His lectures were interesting, instructive, and suggestive. Weber thought that, in order to thoroughly understand physics and apply it to daily life, mere lectures, though illustrated by experiments, were insufficient, and he encouraged his students to experiment themselves, free of charge, in the college laboratory. As a student of twenty years he, with his brother,
Ernst Heinrich Weber, Professor of Anatomy at
Leipzig, had written a book on the
Wave Theory and Fluidity, which brought its authors a considerable reputation. Acoustics was a favourite science of his, and he published numerous papers upon it in
Poggendorffs Annalen, Schweigger's
Jahrbücher für Chemie und Physik, and the musical journal
Carcilia. The 'mechanism of walking in mankind' was another study, undertaken in conjunction with his younger brother,
Eduard Weber. These important investigations were published between the years 1825 and 1838. Gauss and Weber constructed the first electromagnetic
telegraph in 1833, which connected the observatory with the institute for physics in
Göttingen. In December 1837, the Hanoverian government dismissed Weber, one of the
Göttingen Seven, from his post at the university for political reasons. Weber then travelled for a time, visiting England, among other countries, and became professor of physics in
Leipzig from 1843 to 1849, when he was reinstated at Göttingen. One of his most important works, co-authored with
Carl Friedrich Gauss and
Carl Wolfgang Benjamin Goldschmidt, was
Atlas des Erdmagnetismus: nach den Elementen der Theorie entworfen (
Atlas of Geomagnetism: Designed according to the elements of the theory), a series of magnetic maps, and it was chiefly through his efforts that magnetic observatories were instituted. He studied magnetism with Gauss, and during 1864 published his
Electrodynamic Proportional Measures containing a system of absolute measurements for electric currents, which forms the basis of those in use. Weber died in
Göttingen, where he is buried in
the same cemetery as
Max Planck and
Max Born. He was elected a foreign member of the
Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences in 1855. In 1855, with
Rudolf Kohlrausch (1809–1858), he demonstrated that the ratio of
electrostatic to
electromagnetic units produced a number that matched the speed of light. This finding led to
Maxwell's conjecture that
light is an
electromagnetic wave. This also led to Weber's development of
his theory of electrodynamics. Also, the first usage of the letter "c" to denote the
speed of light was in an 1856 paper by Kohlrausch and Weber. ==International recognition==