The Hall effect is the production of a potential difference (the Hall voltage) across an electrical conductor that is transverse to an electric current in the conductor and to an applied magnetic field perpendicular to the current. It was discovered by Edwin Hall in 1879.

This is sometimes termed the ordinary Hall effect to distinguish it from another related effect, which occurs across a void or hole in a semiconductor or metal plate when current is injected via contacts that lie on the boundary or edge of the void. The charge then flows outside the void, within the metal or semiconductor material. The effect becomes observable, in a perpendicular applied magnetic field, as a Hall voltage appearing on either side of a line connecting the current-contacts. It exhibits apparent sign reversal in comparison to the "ordinary" effect occurring in the simply connected specimen. It depends only on the current injected from within the void.

Superposition of these two forms of the effect, the ordinary and void effects, can also be realized. First imagine the "ordinary" configuration, a simply connected (void-less) thin rectangular homogeneous element with current-contacts on the (external) boundary. This develops a Hall voltage, in a perpendicular magnetic field. Next, imagine placing a rectangular void within this ordinary configuration, with current-contacts, as mentioned above, on the interior boundary of the void. (For simplicity, imagine the contacts on the boundary of the void lined up with the ordinary-configuration contacts on the exterior boundary.) In such a combined configuration, the two Hall effects may be realized and observed simultaneously in the same doubly connected device: A Hall effect on the external boundary that is proportional to the current injected only via the outer boundary, and an apparently sign-reversed Hall effect on the interior boundary that is proportional to the current injected only via the interior boundary. The superposition of multiple Hall effects may be realized by placing multiple voids within the Hall element, with current and voltage contacts on the boundary of each void.

Further "Hall effects" may have additional physical mechanisms but are built on these basics.

The Hall coefficient is defined as the ratio of the induced electric field to the product of the current density and the applied magnetic field. It is a characteristic of the material from which the conductor is made, since its value depends on the type, number, and properties of the charge carriers that constitute the current.