Thomas Johann Seebeck (April 9, 1770 – December 10, 1831) was a physicist who in 1821 discovered the thermoelectric effect.
Seebeck was born in Reval, East Prussia (today Tallinn, Estonia) to a wealthy German merchant family. He received a medical degree in 1802 from the University of Göttingen, but preferred to study physics. In 1821 he discovered the thermoelectric effect, where a junction of dissimilar metals produces an electric current when exposed to a temperature gradient. This is now called the Peltier-Seebeck effect and is the basis of thermocouples and thermopiles.
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