Giambatista Beccaria

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Giambatista Beccaria (also Giovanni Battista Beccaria , born as Francesco Ludovico Beccaria, born October 3, 1716 in Mondovì ; † May 27, 1781 in Turin ) was an Italian physicist who made a contribution to the spread of electricity in Italy in the 18th century Has.

Memorial stone to Beccaria at the Torre del Belvedere in Mondovi

Life

Beccaria studied theology in Rome and Narni and joined the Piarist order in 1732 , changing his first name to Giambatista. He taught at the schools of his order in Narni, Urbino , Palermo and Rome. In 1748 he became professor of experimental physics at the University of Turin as the successor to Francisco Antonio Garro.

As a student he took up the then new teachings about electricity and was in particular a proponent of the ideas of Benjamin Franklin (who advocated the thesis that electricity was a single "liquid"), with whom he also corresponded. In 1753 his book Dell´Electricismo Naturale ed Artificiale was published in Turin . The book established his reputation in Europe (Benjamin Franklin himself had it translated into English) and he was in correspondence with scholars such as Joseph Banks , Joseph Priestley . Beccaria also wrote other books on electricity, which appeared in several editions and were widely distributed, and dealt with, among other things, meteorology , sunspots , the northern lights . Alessandro Volta studied his writings, but soon surpassed him with his experimental investigations also in the reputation of his contemporaries.

Beccaria was a staunch experimental physicist. In the theory of electricity, he distinguished between conductors and dielectrics and described the phenomenon of the Faraday cage (Faraday 1836) by predicting that the electrical charge would remain on the surface of the conductor and not penetrate the inside of the conductor. He investigated atmospheric electricity and ensured the spread of lightning rods in Italy, which therefore prevailed there earlier than in the rest of Europe. Among other things, he installed lightning rods on the Milan Cathedral , the Quirinals Palace in Rome and on St. Mark's Basilica in Venice .

In the 1760s he led (supported by his assistant and successor in Turin from 1781 Father Domenico Canonica ) on behalf of King Charles Emanuel III. , who wanted to help Turin to a scientific reputation, carried out a degree measurement of the meridian arc between Andrate and Mondovi, published 1774 in Gradus Taurinensis . The basis was the determination of the length of a straight line from Piazza Statuta in Turin (where a plaque commemorates Beccaria) and Rivoli . It came to an arc length of 1 degree, 7 minutes, 44 seconds, a little less than the exact value. The astronomer César François Cassini de Thury in Paris, who was director of the observatory there and who carried out the national survey of France, criticized the result because he himself based an estimate on the assumption of a mean ellipsoidal shape of the earth at a value of 1 degree 8 minutes and 14 seconds came. Around 1820 Giovanni Antonio Amedeo Plana correctly traced the deviation back to vertical deviations in the measurements caused by the mass of the nearby Alps.

With his students Count Giuseppe Saluzzo di Monesiglio (* 1734), Gianfrancesco Cigna (* 1734) and Joseph-Louis Lagrange , he founded a scientific society in 1757, from which the Reale Accademia delle Scienze in Turin emerged by royal decree in 1783, whose first president Monesiglio was. Later there was a heated argument between Beccaria and his students about the nature of the oxidation of metals (whereby Beccaria was right from today's point of view - he measured an increase in weight and concluded that the metals had absorbed something from the air).

When burning tin in a closed container (an experiment that Robert Boyle first carried out) he discovered that the increase in weight of the metal (formation of metal limescale) depended on the amount of air trapped, which Antoine de Lavoisier also recognized (Beccaria reported in a letter to a French magazine 1774 claims priority). Equally influential among European chemists were his experiments in which he reversed the formation of metal limes with electrical discharges (Elettricismo artificiale, 1772). Metal limes were a problem for the prevailing phlogiston theory at the time . Actually, phlogiston was supposed to escape during combustion (formation of metal lime) and according to Georg Ernst Stahl the phlogiston was an "earthy", invisible, heavy substance that had not yet been identified. However, the weight of the metal lime was higher. Conversely, when reducing metal lime to metal, phlogistone should be added (although the mass then decreased). Beccaria's experiments suggested a possible identification of the phlogistone with electricity, which fascinated chemists at the time.

In 1755 he became a member of the Royal Society .

Fonts

  • Dell´Electricismo Naturale ed Artificiale, Turin 1753
  • Dell'Elettricismo, Lettere ... Coll 'Appendice di un Nuovo Fosforo Descritto ..., Bologna 1758
  • Experimenta atque observationes quibus electricitatis vindex late constituitur atque explicatur ", 1769
  • Elettricismo Artificiale, Turin 1772 (translated into English in 1774)
  • Della Elettricità Terrestre Atmosferica a Cielo Sereno, Turin 1775

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ In contrast to other contemporary physicists who advocated a two-fluid theory, such as Robert Symmer and Abbé Nollet .
  2. ↑ Later a successful doctor. He also treated Beccaria on his deathbed.
  3. ↑ Szabadvary, Lavoisier, Teubner, p.29
  4. ^ Marco Beretta, Article Lavoisier, New Dictionary of Scientific Biography , Volume 4, p. 214
personal data
SURNAME Beccaria, Giambatista
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Beccaria, Giovanni Battista
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Italian physicist
DATE OF BIRTH October 3, 1716
PLACE OF BIRTH Mondovì
DATE OF DEATH May 27, 1781
Place of death Turin