Wilhelm Eduard Weber

Wilhelm Eduard Weber (Wittenberg October 24, 1804 – Göttingen June 23, 1891) was a German physicist. In 1828 he became professor extraordinarius in Halle and in 1831 ordinarius in Göttingen. In 1837 he was dismissed for political reasons (see Göttinger Sieben); in 1843 he became professor in Leipzig, and finally returned to his former post in Göttingen in 1849, where he would stay to his death.

Already as a student he investigated sound waves and in 1825 he published, together with is brother E. H. Weber, the Die Wellenlehre auf Experimente gegründet (The theory of waves based on experiments). He cooperated for many years with his Göttingen colleague Carl Friedrich Gauss. Together they constructed (1833) a telegraph machine that functioned properly. Weber did good work in the area of magnetism, induction, and electromagnetic units. The unit Weber for magnetic flux is named for him.