Thomas Johann Seebeck
Baltic German physicist (1770-1831)
Thomas Johann Seebeck (German: [ˈtoːmas ˈjoːhan ˈzeːbɛk]; 9 April 1770 – 10 December 1831) was a German physicist who observed a relationship between heat and magnetism. Danish physicist Hans Christian Ørsted later called this phenomenon the thermoelectric effect.
Early life and experiments
Seebeck was born in Reval (today Tallinn) to a wealthy Baltic German merchant family. He received a medical degree in 1802 from the University of Göttingen, but preferred to study physics. From 1821 to 1823, Seebeck performed a series of experiments trying to understand Ørsted's findings from 1820. During his experiments, he observed that a junction of dissimilar metals produces a deflexion on a magnetic needle (compass) when exposed to a temperature gradient. Because Ørsted had discovered that an electric current produces a deflexion on a compass transversal to the wire, Seebeck's results were interpreted as a thermoelectric effect. This is now called the Peltier–Seebeck effect and is the basis of thermocouples and thermopiles.
Seebeck effect
In 1822, after previous experiments on voltaic current and magnetism, Thomas Johann Seebeck found that a circuit made from two dissimilar metals with junctions at different temperatures would deflect a compass magnet. Seebeck believed this was due to magnetism induced by the temperature difference.
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