Wilhelm Eduard Weber (1804-1891) was a German physicist and a significant figure in the field of electromagnetism. He is best known for his work in developing Weber’s law, as well as his contributions to the understanding of electrical measurements and the relationship between electricity and magnetism. Along with his notable contemporaries, such as Carl Friedrich Gauss, Weber conducted important experiments and formulated theories that laid the groundwork for electromagnetic theory.
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Wilhelm Eduard Weber developed a description of magnetization in which the microscopic magnets already exist and respond to an applied magnetic field. James Clerk Maxwell's treatise contrasts this with a model in which the field induces molecular magnetism. The distinction matters because changing the orientation of persistent magnetic dipoles can change the bulk magnetization without creating each magnetic moment from zero. A material can therefore have a small net magnetic response even when its microscopic magnetic contributions are individually nonzero.[ref]
A Treatise on Electricity and Magnetism by James Clerk Maxwell. Volume II, chapter VI, section 442, Weber’s pre-existing molecular magnets and the induced-magnetization comparison
Wilhelm Eduard Weber, portrait by Gottlieb Biermann, 1885
. Portrait source. Gottlieb Biermann; scanned by Michael Schönitzer in November 2008 from Die großen Deutschen im Bilde (1936). Public-domain artwork; faithful photographic reproduction, PD-Art / Public Domain Mark.
