---
title: "Hans Christian Ørsted"
chunk: 2/3
source: "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hans_Christian_Ørsted"
category: "reference"
tags: "science, encyclopedia"
date_saved: "2026-05-05T04:07:14.623998+00:00"
instance: "kb-cron"
---

Ørsted was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh in March 1821, a Foreign Member of the Royal Society of London in April 1821, a foreign member of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences in 1822, a member of the American Philosophical Society in 1829, and a Foreign Honorary Member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1849.
He founded the Selskabet for Naturlærens Udbredelse (Society for the Dissemination of Natural Science, SNU) in 1824. He was also the founder of predecessor organizations which eventually became the Danish Meteorological Institute and the Danish Patent and Trademark Office. In 1829, Ørsted founded Den Polytekniske Læreanstalt (College of Advanced Technology), which was later renamed the Technical University of Denmark (DTU).
In 1824, Ørsted made a significant contribution to chemistry by being the first person to successfully produce aluminium in its metallic state, albeit in a less-than-pure form. In 1808, Humphry Davy had predicted the existence of the metal which he gave the name of alumium. However his attempts to isolate it using electrolysis processes were unsuccessful; the closest he came was an aluminium-iron alloy. Ørsted succeeded in isolating the metallic form by reacting aluminium chloride with potassium amalgam (an alloy of potassium and mercury) and then boiling away the mercury, which left small "chunks" of metal that he described as appearing similar to tin. He presented his results and a sample of the metal at meetings of the Danish Academy of Sciences in early 1825, but otherwise appears to have considered his discovery to be of limited importance. This ambivalence, coupled with the limited audience for the Danish Academy's journal in which the results had been published, meant that the discovery went mostly unnoticed by the wider scientific community at the time. Busy with other work, in 1827 Ørsted gave his friend, the German chemist Friedrich Wöhler, permission to take over the research. Wöhler was able to produce approximately 30 grams (1.1 oz) of aluminium powder soon thereafter, using a process of his own design, before finally, in 1845, isolating a quantity of solid metal sufficient for him to describe some of its physical properties.

Ørsted died in Copenhagen in 1851, aged 73, and was buried there in the Assistens Cemetery.

== Legacy ==

The centimetre-gram-second system (CGS) unit of magnetic induction (oersted) is named for his contributions to the field of electromagnetism.
The company Danish Oil and Natural Gas (DONG), was renamed Ørsted to signal its transition from fossil fuels to becoming one the world's leading developers and operators of offshore windfarms.
The first Danish satellite, launched in 1999, was named after Ørsted.

=== Toponymy ===
The Ørsted Park in Copenhagen was named after Ørsted and his brother in 1879. The streets H. C. Ørsteds Vej in Frederiksberg and H. C. Ørsteds Allé in Galten are also named after him.
The buildings that are home to the Department of Chemistry and the Institute for Mathematical Sciences at the University of Copenhagen's North Campus are named the H.C. Ørsted Institute, after him. A dormitory named H. C. Ørsted Kollegiet is located in Odense.

=== Monuments and memorials ===

A statue of Hans Christian Ørsted was installed in the Ørsted Park in 1880. A commemorative plaque is located above the gate on the building in Studiestræde where he lived and worked.
In 1885, a statue of Ørsted was installed in the Oxford University Museum of Natural History.
Ørsted's likeness has appeared twice on Danish banknotes; for the first time on 500 kroner notes issued in 1875, and for the second time on 100 kroner notes issued between 1962 and 1974.

=== Awards and lectures ===
Two medals are awarded in Ørsted's name: the H. C. Ørsted Medal for Danish scientists, awarded by the Danish Society for the Dissemination of Natural Science (SNU), as founded by Ørsted, and the Oersted Medal for notable contributions in the teaching of physics in America, awarded by American Association of Physics Teachers.
The Technical University of Denmark hosts the H. C. Ørsted Lecture series for prominent and engaging researchers from around the world.

== Works ==
Ørsted was a published poet, as well as scientist. His poetry series Luftskibet ("The Airship") was inspired by the balloon flights of fellow physicist and stage magician Étienne-Gaspard Robert. 

Ørsted, H. C. (1836). Luftskibet, et Digt [The Airship, a Poem] (in Danish). København: Gyldendal. OCLC 28930872.
In 1850, shortly before his death, he submitted for publication a two-volume collection of philosophical articles in German under the title Der Geist in der Natur ("The Soul in Nature"). It was translated into English and published in one volume in 1852, the year after his death.

Ørsted, H. C. (1850–1851). Der Geist in der Natur [The Soul in Nature] (in German). München: J. G. Cotta. OCLC 653954.
—— (1852). The Soul in Nature, with Supplementary Contributions. Bohn's scientific library [16]. Translated by Horner, L.; Horner, J. B. London: Henry G. Bohn. hdl:2027/loc.ark:/13960/t4zg7w20q. OCLC 8719272.
Other works: