Alessandro Volta

Alessandro Giuseppe Antonio Anastasio Volta Count ( born February 18, 1745 in Como, Habsburg Monarchy, † March 5, 1827 in Como, Empire of Austria ) was an Italian physicist. He invented the battery and is considered one of the founders of the theory of electricity.

Life and work

Volta was born into a wealthy family in Como in the then Habsburg northern Italy as one of nine children, five of whom - as well as some uncle - priests were. The father himself was long Jesuitennovize. Voltas parents, Filippo Volta and Maria Maddalena dei Conti Inzaghi had, but provided a different career path for Volta and sent him in preparation for a career in law 1758-1760 to a Jesuit school. In the self-study, he worked on books about electricity ( Musschenbroek, Jean -Antoine Nollet, Giambatista Beccaria ) and corresponded with leading scholars. The Turin physics professor Giambatista Beccaria (1716-1781) advised him to concentrate on experimental work. In 1769 he published his first physical work that had already become loud criticism of the authorities. 1775 grew famous by the invention of the soon used throughout Europe electrophorus, could be produced and transported with the induction produced by static electricity. In 1774 he was appointed superintendent and director of the public schools in Como. Already in 1775 he was appointed professor of experimental physics at the school in Como. 1776, he discovered in the marshes of Lake Maggiore rising gas bubbles of methane and began with the combustible gas to experiment ( Volta pistol, in which an electric spark in a bottle triggers the combustion, a kind of gas lighter ). He constructed so steadily burning lamps, and used his Volta pistol as a measuring device for the oxygen content of gases ( Eudiometer ). All these findings have led to the fact that he 1778 ( after a trip to Switzerland in 1777, where he met Voltaire among others ) was appointed professor of physics at the University of Pavia appointed. There he invented a ( " straw " - ) electroscope to measure very small amounts of electricity (1783 ), the measurements quantified with the introduction of their own power units (the word " stress " comes from him) and formulated the proportionality of applied load and voltage in the capacitor. In 1792 he learned of the frog experiments of the respected anatomist Luigi Galvani, who attributed to animal electricity this. However, Volta realized the cause of muscle spasms in external stresses (such as contact electricity, if it has been experimented with several metals ), and there arose a controversy over galvanism, who shared the scientists throughout Europe in stock. For Galvani the explanation was that the frog a kind of the Leyden jar (ie, a capacitor ) was, for Volta he was just a kind of detector. Today is still important that this resulted Voltas years of studies on the contact electricity and finally his pioneering invention of the battery.

Volta should have anticipated in his writings the idea of the telegraph and the Gay -Lussac 's law (volume expansion of gases is proportional to the temperature).

However, his biggest and most successful invention was constructed around 1800 voltaic pile, the first working battery ( after he had studied electrical voltage ranges of various metals already in the 1790s ). It consisted of stacked elements from each of a copper and a zinc plate, which were separated by textiles (initially water or brine ) were soaked in acid. He describes the invention in a famous letter to Sir Joseph Banks of the Royal Society. Only this invention, the battery enabled further research into the magnetic properties of electric currents and the use of electricity in chemistry in the following century.

1791 appointed him as a member of the Royal Society of London and awarded him their Copley Medal in 1794. In 1792 he went on his second trip abroad, where he visited among others Laplace, Lavoisier in Paris and Georg Christoph Lichtenberg in Göttingen. He also travels to London. In 1801 he traveled to Paris, where he presents his battery on November 7, Napoleon Bonaparte.

In 1802 he was awarded by the Institut de France, the Gold Medal of Honor from Napoleon and a pension. After Napoleon had conquered Italy, he appointed Volta, who even then actually wanted to retire to 1809 and senator in 1810 elevated him to the rank of count. After the invention of the battery he gave the research and teaching increasingly, but was still moved by the appointment as Dean of the Faculty of Philosophy in 1813 to stay until his final retirement in 1819, his career had survived the changing power relations without prejudice -. , He was both the Habsburgs and in Napoleon 's favor. In retirement, he retired to his country house in Camnago near Como.

Volta married after he had previously lived for many years with a singer, in 1794 the wealthy Peregrini Teresa, with whom he reared two sons together. It is located in Camnago, a district of Como buried, which is called since 1863 Camnago Volta. There you can also see his instruments in the Museum Tempio Volta Lighthouse.

In the 19th century Volta was the highest award that can probably be granted a physicist honored: In his honor the unit of measurement for electrical voltage was titled internationally called volts. This was first proposed in 1861 by a committee of the British Association for the Advancement of Science.

1964 lunar craters Volta was named after him.

Writings

• Massardi F. (Editor): Alessandro Volta. Epistolario, 5 volumes, Bologna, Zanichelli, 1949-1955 ( letters )
• Alessandro Volta Le Opere, Milan, 7 volumes, Hoepli, 1918 ( Reprint: Johnson, New York 1968)