The list of scientists who worked in the field of effects of electric current.
1.Benjamin Franklin
On Jan 17, 1706, Benjamin was born in Boston. His father was Josiah Franklin. He was the smallest among the10 brothers.
He is best known for his kite experiment, we all have heard of this.
As a scientist, he was a known figure in the history of physics for his discoveries and theories regarding electricity.
His well-known inventions are lighting rod, bifocals, and the Franklin Stove.
He was always curious about the electricity but he started investigating the phenomenon of electricity in 1746 when he saw the lectures of Archibald Spencer’s using static electricity for illustrations. Franklin suggested that vitreous and resinous electricity were not different types of electrical fluid but the same “fluid” under various pressures. (The same proposal was made independently that same year by William Watson.) Franklin was the first to label them as positive and negative respectively, and he was the first to discover the principle of conservation of charge.
In 1748, he designed a multiple plate capacitor, that he called an “electrical battery”. By placing eleven sheets of glass sandwiched between lead plates, suspended with silk cords and connected by wires.
Franklin briefly analyzed electrotherapy, comprising the use of the electric bath. This work directed to the field becoming widely known.
2.George Simon Ohm
Georg Simon Ohm was a German physicist popularly known for “Ohm’s Law”. It states that the current flow through a conductor is directly proportional to the potential difference (voltage) and inversely proportional to the resistance.
The unit of electrical resistance, the Ohm (symbol: Ω), was named after him.
He started his law for the electromotive force acting between the extremities of any part of a circuit is the product of the strength of the current and the resistance of that part of the circuit.
3.Andre Marie Ampere
André-Marie Ampère made the revolutionary discovery that a current-carrying wire can attract or repel another wire next to it that’s also carrying electric current.
The attraction is magnetic in nature, but no magnets are necessary for the phenomenon to be observed.
He formulated Ampere’s Law of electromagnetism and developed the best definition of electric current of his time.
The SI unit for electric current is the ampere or amp (symbol A), named in Ampère’s honour. It was Ampère who first defined electric current as a ‘circulation of electric fluid in a closed circuit.’
4.Charles-Augustin de Coulomb
Charles Coulomb (June 14, 1736 – August 23, 1806) was a French physicist and military engineer.
Coulomb is most famous for his work with electricity and magnetism.
His researches and papers were the first to describe how electricity worked and its relationship to magnetism.
Coulomb’s law states that in a vacuum, the force between two stationary point charges is inversely proportional to the square of the distance. The power is proportional to the product of the force in the direction in which connected. Charges of the same sign repel, while opposite charge attract.
Mathematically Coulomb’s law states:
F = k×q1×q2 / r2
F is the force on q1 and q2 measured in newtons (N).
k is Coulomb’s constant k = 8.988×109 (N⋅m2/C2)
q1 is the first charge in coulombs (C).
q2 is the second charge in coulombs (C).
r is the distance between the 2 charges in meters (m).
5.Alessandro Volta
In 1745 Alessandro Volta was born in Como, Italy.
In the late 18th century, scientists were fascinated with electricity. Benjamin Franklin had performed his famous kite experiment, bringing electricity from lightning in 1752. Leyden jars, invented in 1746, could store charge and create a spark of electricity. Doctors were treating patients with electric shocks for all sorts of ills.
He developed and described the first electrochemical battery, the voltaic pile, in 1800.
He invented the volcanic pile which was the first electrical battery that could provide electric current continuously in a circuit.
6.Thomas Alva Edison
Thomas Alva Edison is well known for his inventions such as the first practical light bulb and the phonograph.
He has more than 1,000 patents for his inventions.
When he died on October 18, 1931, Thomas Edison had amassed a record 1,093 patents.
389 patients for electric light and power,
195 patients for the phonograph,
150 patients for the telegraph
and 141 patients for storage batteries and 34 for the telephone.
7.Michael Faraday
Michael Faraday was born on 22 September 1791.
He is best known for his work in the field of electricity and magnetism.
His one of the biggest achievement was Faraday’s law of induction (briefly, Faraday’s law) is a basic law of electromagnetism predicting how a magnetic field will interact with an electric circuit to produce an electromotive force (EMF)—a phenomenon known as electromagnetic induction which is the fundamental operating principle of transformers, inductors, and many types of electrical motors, generators and solenoids.
8.Alexander Graham Bell
Alexander Graham Bell was born on March 3, 1847. He was a Scottish-born inventor, scientist, and engineer. He is credited for the invention of the first practical telephone. American Telephone and Telegraph Company (AT&T) was confounded by him in 1885.
At the age of 29, in 1876 he invented the telephone.
He died on August 2, 1922.
9.William Sturgeon
William Sturgeon was born on 22 May 1783 and died on 4 December 1850. He was an English physicist and inventor. He made the first electromagnets and invented the first practical electric motor.
10.Nikola Tesla
Nikola Tesla was born in July 1856 and died on 7 January 1943. He was a Serbian-American inventor, electrical engineer, mechanical engineer, and futurist. He is best known for the development of design of the modern alternating current (AC) electricity supply system.
From the 1890s to 1906, Tesla spent his time and fortune on a number of projects trying to develop the transmission of electrical power without wires. It was an expansion of his notion of using coils to deliver power that he had been demonstrating in wireless lighting. He saw this as not only a way to transmit huge amounts of power around the planet but also, as he had brought up in his earlier lectures, a way to transmit universal communications.
At the time Tesla was developing his ideas, there was no practical way to wirelessly transmit communication signals over long distances, let alone large amounts of power.
There are a lot more scientists, engineers and researchers who have given their contribution in the field of electric current whose names are not mentioned but important too.