Johann Schweigger

Johann Salomo Christoph Schweigger (8 April 1779 to 6 September 1857) was a German chemist, physicist and professor of mathematics, born in Erlangen, the son of a professor of theology. He studied philosophy there and wrote a doctoral thesis connected with the Homeric Question, but Johann Tobias Mayer, Georg Friedrich Hildebrandt and Karl Christian von Langsdorf persuaded him to turn to physics and chemistry. He lectured at Erlangen until 1803, then taught at schools in Bayreuth and, from 1811, Nuremberg, returned to Erlangen as professor of philosophy from 1816 to 1819, and then moved to the University of Halle. In 1820 he built the first sensitive galvanometer, named after Luigi Galvani, by winding a coil of wire around a graduated compass; the instrument, first called a multiplier, could both detect and measure small electric currents. He was elected to the Leopoldina in 1816 and wrote late works on mythology, ancient science and stoichiometry. He was the father of Karl Ernst Theodor Schweigger.