Thomas Johann Seebeck

Physicist, born in Tallin, Estonia. He studied medicine at Berlin and the University of Göttingen, then abandoned medical practice for research in physics. A member of the Berlin Academy, in 1822 he showed that if a circuit is made of a loop of two metals with two junctions, then when the junctions are at different temperatures a current flows; he had thus discovered the thermoelectric effect, now much used in thermocouples for temperature measurement.

Thomas Johann Seebeck (April 9, 1770 – December 10, 1831) was a physicist who in 1821 discovered the thermoelectric effect.

Seebeck was born in Reval (today Tallinn), Estonia to a wealthy Baltic German merchant family. In 1821 he discovered the thermoelectric effect, where a junction of dissimilar metals produces an electric current when exposed to a temperature gradient.