Ottaviano Fabrizio Mossotti
Ottaviano Fabrizio Mossotti (born April 18, 1791 in Novara , † March 20, 1863 in Pisa ) was an Italian physicist and astronomer (mathematical physics , celestial mechanics , geodesy , dielectrics ).
Mossotti went to school in Novara and studied at the University of Pavia , where he graduated with honors in 1811. In 1813 he went to the Brera observatory , where he had his first scientific success. Since he was at the same time politically active against the onset of the reaction and had contacts with the revolutionary Filippo Buonarroti , he was suspected by the then ruling Austrian authorities and had to flee abroad. Via Switzerland and London he went to Buenos Aires in 1827 , where he was a professor at the university, and ran an observatory, a weather station and an experimental physics laboratory at the newly founded Museo Argentino de Ciencias Naturales Bernardino Rivadavia . When the political and working conditions worsened after a change of government in 1835, he went back to Italy. He went to Turin, where he published the treatise Sur les forces qui régissent la constitution intérieure del corps (1836), which brought him international recognition, for example by Michael Faraday . She also gave him a professorship at the Ionian University of Corfu founded by Fredrick North in 1824 . In 1840 he was called to Pisa , where he remained for the remainder of his academic career as a professor of mathematical physics and celestial mechanics. There he was one of the founders of the mathematical tradition in Pisa with his student Enrico Betti . In the Italian Wars of Independence in 1848 he was commander of the battalion of the University of Pisa in the Battle of Goito against the Austrians at Curtatone and Montanara.
In 1859 he became a member of the State Council of Tuscany and in 1863 he became a Senator of the Republic of Italy.
Mossotti's work followed the tradition of the French school of theoretical physics ( André-Marie Ampère , Siméon Denis Poisson , Pierre Simon de Laplace ). The Clausius-Mossotti equation of physical chemistry (theory of dielectrics) was named after Mossotti and Rudolf Clausius .
Fonts
- Lezioni elementari di fisica matematica, Florence, 2 volumes, 1843, 1845
Web links
- Ottaviano Fabrizio Mossotti: the Youth Years (1791-1823)
- Article by Jed Buchwald in the Dictionary of Scientific Biography
- Italian biography
Individual evidence
- ↑ Mossotti Sull'influenza che l'azione di un mezzo dielettrico ha sulla distribuzione dell'elettricità alla superfice di più corpi elettrici disseminati in esso , Memorie di matematica e di fisica della Società italiana delle scienze, Volume 24, Part 2, 1850, S 49-74
| personal data | |
|---|---|
| SURNAME | Mossotti, Ottaviano Fabrizio |
| BRIEF DESCRIPTION | Italian physicist |
| DATE OF BIRTH | April 18, 1791 |
| PLACE OF BIRTH | Novara |
| DATE OF DEATH | March 20, 1863 |
| Place of death | Pisa |