Hans Christian Ørsted was born the 14th of August 1777. He took a pharmaceutics degree in 1797. In 1806 he became professor at the University of Copenhagen. In 1829 Ørsted abandoned his work at the university, to become the director of administrations at the newly formed Polytech Institute, which he himself was among the creators of. He remained in this position until his death 9th of March 1851.
His lifetime of work has had great influence on science and technology, and to some degree he even shaped some of it.
1820 Ørsted discovered electromagnetism, and as with many discoveries, it was by chance. While in the middle of one of his evening lectures he and his audience noticed that his compass, which was lying close to a wire, was affected by the wire when electric current flowed through it. Although Ørsted was the first to provide proof of the existence of electromagnetism, he was in fact not the first to claim the discovery, in 1802 an Italian scientist, Gian Domenico Romagnosi, claimed to have witnessed the same phenomenon, but no one believed him, the leading scientists of that time ignored his claim, since it defied their logic. But there where none to challenge Ørsted´s discovery, first of all - he was already a very respected scientist, and second – he had a large group of science students witnessing his disovery. Thus came the birth of electromagnetism, one of the cornerstones of modern science.
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