Hofrath Langsdorff, who was the professor of mathematics at Erlangen during the last decade of the eighteenth century, and who was called to Heidelberg in 1804, a fact that would seem quite enough to set beyond all question that his opinion in this matter may be taken as that of a competent judge, declared that the elder Ohm's mathematical knowledge was far above the ordinary, and that he knew much more than the elements even of the higher mathematics. Under these circumstances, it is not surprising that the father should have tried to encourage in both his boys a taste for mathematics, nor that he should have taken their mathematical instruction into his own hands and succeeded in making excellent mathematicians of them, even in their early years. He was so successful in this, indeed, that Langsdorff, after a five-hour examination of the brothers when they were respectively 12 and 15, did not hesitate to declare that the Erlangen locksmith's family was likely to be remembered as containing a pair of brothers who, for success in mathematics, might rival the famous Bernoulli brothers, so well known at that time. This might be thought only a bit of neighborly praise, meant to warm a father's heart, yet it seems indeed to have been given quite seriously. Certainly the event justified the prophecy. It is not surprising that, with such a forecast to encourage him, the father should have been ready to make every sacrifice to enable both his sons to prepare for the university. He continued his instruction of them, then, in mathematics, though he insisted at the same time that they should continue to keep up their occupation of locksmiths. In spite of his enthusiasm for mathematics, the old gentleman seems to have cherished no illusions with regard to the likelihood of pure mathematics ever serving them as a lucrative means of livelihood. It was a very satisfying intellectual interest, but a good trade was much more apt to prove their constant and substantial standby, unless, of course, the boys should actually prove to be the geniuses foretold. He seems to have realized to the full, Coleridge's idea that, like the literary man, the mathematician should have some other occupation, though he might not go to the extent of following Oliver Wendell Holmes' well-known addition to Coleridge's formula, that he should, as far as possible, confine himself to the other occupation. The boys were given the opportunity to attend the gymnasium of Erlangen, and seem to have had excellent success in their general studies besides mathematics.[28]