Federico Luigi Menabrea
Luigi Federico Menabrea Conte di ( Luigi Federico Menabrea Earl of; born September 4, 1809 in Chambéry, † May 24, 1896 in Saint- Cassin ) was an Italian scientist, general and politician. From 1867 to 1869, Menabrea Prime Minister of Italy.
Life
He studied in Turin engineering science and mathematics in the domains of professors Giovanni Plana and Bidone. As an engineer and officer of the military authority for planning and implementation Camillo Benso Count of he replaced Cavour at the fortress of Bard. Later he became professor of mechanics and construction planning at the Military Academy.
1840, the second congress of Italian scientists took place in Turin at the Academy of Sciences, who were invited by King Charles Albert. At the Congress also Charles Babbage took part, who was invited by the astronomer Giovanni Piana to submit its draft calculating machine. In Turin Babbage presented for the first time a scientific audience his draft. The presentation inspired the Italian scientist and sat in a smaller seminar continued. These seminars, which was in about the concatenation of arithmetic operations, a precursor of programming, discussed for the first time, Luigi Menabrea and physicist Ottaviano Mossotti involved. Menabrea devoted himself in the wake of a description of the design of Babbage, which he published in French in 1842 at the " Bibliothèque Universelle de Genève " and can be considered the first scientific work on computer science: " Notions sur la machine de Analytique Charles Babbage ". This text was a few months later reissued and substantially expanded by Ada Lovelace, a colleague of Babbage.
1846 Menabrea Professor of Civil Engineering at the University of Turin and this chair was he retained until 1860 when. In 1848 he was elected a member of the Piedmontese Parliament, he was a member of the House of Representatives until 1859, when he retired to Major General for his appointment. 1860 appointed him the King for a senator for life. He then took part as a first lieutenant of the military authority for planning and implementing the campaigns in Lombardy (1859 ) and at the siege of the fortress of Gaeta ( 1860). On 3 October 1860 he was awarded the Order " Grande Ufficiale dell'Ordine Militare d' Italia ".
In politics he was Secretary of the Navy in the cabinet of Bettino Ricasoli ( 1861-62 ) and Minister for Public Works in the Cabinet Farini - Minghetti ( 1862-64 ). Of 27 October 1867 to 13 May 1869, he followed Urbano Rattazzi as Prime Minister of the Kingdom of Italy in following three cabinets. In this position, he defied the pope to wrest the experiments of Giuseppe Garibaldi, Rome. On top of that he was unpopular regulations such as the taxation of flour goodbye.
After his resignation from ministerial office, he was appointed ambassador in London. In 1875 he received the hereditary title Marquis of Valdora. He retired until 1892 back from public life.
Despite his difficult military and political operations Menabrea ran a remarkable scientific research. He was the first scientist who carried out a formulation of structural analysis using the principle of virtual work and therefore was in all respects a forerunner in the introduction of the energetic principles in continuum mechanics. He formulated the now as a set of Menabrea known principle and published in 1870 along with Joseph Bertrand the first accurate representation. The set of Menabrea, who is also known as the principle of Castigliano and Menabrea, similar to the set of Castigliano and states that the strain energy of statically indeterminate systems assumes a minimum.
He was a member of the Accademia delle Scienze di Torino and the Accademia Nazionale dei Lincei.