Giovanni Battista Beccaria
Giambatista Beccaria (also Giovanni Battista Beccaria, as Francesco Ludovico Beccaria born, born October 3, 1716 in Mondovi, † May 27, 1781 in Turin ) was an Italian physicist who earns the spread of Electricity in Italy in the 18th century made has.
Life and work
Beccaria studied in Rome and Narni theology and entered the 1732 Piaristen Medal at, where he changed 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 of Francisco Antonio Garro.
Even as a student he took up the then-new lessons about electricity and was in particular a representative of the ideas of Benjamin Franklin ( who represented the thesis, it was stated that the electricity to a single " fluid " ), with whom he was in correspondence. Appeared in 1753 in Turin his book Dell'Electricismo Naturale ed Artificiale. The book established his reputation in Europe (Benjamin Franklin himself had it translated into English ) and he stood with scientists such as Joseph Banks, Joseph Priestley in correspondence. Beccaria also wrote more books on electricity, which appeared in several editions and widely disseminated, and dealt among other things with meteorology, sunspots, the Northern Lights. Alessandro Volta studied his writings, but surpassed him soon with his experimental studies in the reputation of his contemporaries.
Beccaria was a committed experimentalist. In the theory of electricity, he distinguished conductors and dielectrics and described the phenomenon of the Faraday cage ( Faraday 1836) by predicting that the electric charge remains on the surface of the conductor and does not penetrate into the interior of the conductor. He investigated atmospheric electricity and spread the use of lightning rods in Italy, therefore prevailed there earlier than in the rest of Europe. Among other things, he installed a lightning rod at the Milan Cathedral, the Quirinal Palace in Rome and St Mark's Basilica in Venice.
In the 1760s he led (supported by his assistant and successor in Turin 1781 Father Domenico Canonica ) on behalf of King Charles Emmanuel III by. , Who wanted to help Turin to scientific reputation, a measurement of a degree of meridian arc between Andrate and Mondovi, published in 1774 Gradus Taurinensis. Base was to determine the length of a straight line from the Piazza Statuta in Turin ( where a plaque to remind Beccaria ) and Rivoli. He came up with an arc length of 1 degree 7 minutes, 44 seconds, slightly lower than the exact value. The astronomer César François Cassini de Thury in Paris, who was director of the observatory and who conducted the National Survey of France, criticized the result, as he himself terms of estimation assuming an average ellipsoidal shape of the earth to a value of 1 degree 8 minutes and 14 seconds came. In 1820 Giovanni Antonio Amedeo Plana led the deviation correctly on vertical deflections in the measurements caused by the mass of the nearby Alps back.
With his pupils Count Giuseppe Saluzzo di Monesiglio (* 1734), Gianfrancesco Cigna (* 1734) and Joseph -Louis Lagrange, he founded in 1757 a scientific society, emerged from the 1783 royal decree, Reale Accademia delle Scienze in Turin, its first president Monesiglio had. Later, there was a heated argument between Beccaria and his students to the nature of the oxidation of metals (where Beccaria from today's perspective was right - he measured weight gain and concluded that the metals had taken something from the air).
In 1755 he became a member of the Royal Society.
Writings
- Dell'Electricismo Naturale ed Artificiale, Turin 1753
- Dell'Elettricismo, Humanities Coll ... ' Appendice di un Nuovo Fosforo descritto ..., Bologna 1758
- Experimenta atque observationes quibus electricitatis vindex late constituitur atque explicatur ", 1769
- Elettricismo Artificiale, Turin 1772 (1774 translated into English)
- Della Elettricità Terrestre Atmosferica a Cielo Sereno, Turin 1775