Thomas Johann Seebeck

Thomas Johann Seebeck
Born	9 April 1770 (1770-04-09) Reval, Russian Empire
Died	10 December 1831 (1831-12-11) (aged 61) Berlin, Kingdom of Prussia[1]
Known for	Discovering the thermoelectric effect
Scientific career
Fields	Physics

Thomas Johann Seebeck (German: [ˈtoːmas ˈjoːhan ˈzeːbɛk]; 9 April 1770 – 10 December 1831) was a German physicist, who, in 1822, observed a relationship between heat and magnetism. Later, in 1823, Ørsted^[who?] called this phenomenon the thermoelectric effect.

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.^[2] This is now called the Peltier–Seebeck effect and is the basis of thermocouples and thermopiles.