Luigi Galvani
Luigi Galvani ( born September 9, 1737 Bologna, Italy, † December 4, 1798 ) was an Italian physician, anatomist and biophysicists. Giovanni Aldini was his nephew.
Life
Galvani studied theology at first, later medicine and became in 1762 professor of medicine at Bologna, and in 1775 the practical anatomy. The applause which his treatise De renibus atque urethris volatilium found led him to the decision to modify the physiology of birds; but he later was limited to the examination of their organs of hearing.
Chance led him on November 6, 1780 to the discovery of galvanism named after him, what Emil du Bois -Reymond in the first volume of his studies on animal electricity (Berlin 1848) reported.
Galvani discovered through experiments with frogs' legs, the contraction of muscles when they came into contact with copper and iron, with copper and iron had to be connected. Galvani presented so unknowingly a circuit here, consisting of two different metals, an electrolyte ( " salt water " in the frog legs ) and a " power indicator " ( muscle). Galvani recognized these connections yet, but he laid the foundation for the development of electrochemical cells ( also called Galvanic cell or Galvanic Cells ) by Alessandro Volta.
Galvani noticed that a frog's legs, standing with a knife blade in contact, always winced when standing at a nearby high-voltage machine skipped a spark. He was convinced - probably because of a few decades earlier employed by Benjamin Franklin 's famous lightning rod tests - that flashes of lightning are also those sparks in principle, only much larger. He led an isolated fixed wire from the ridge of a house in the garden of a frog leg. A second wire led from this into a well. So often now aufzuckte lightning during a thunderstorm in the area, got the frog legs in motion, and this before the associated thunder was heard.
During the Reign of Terror of the French Revolution, Galvani refused to take the oath to the new government. Through the Welfare Committee, he then lost his office, in which he was, however, used after 1794 again.
Honors
1875, the city of Bologna a competition for a statue of Luigi Galvani. Winner was the sculptor Adalberto Cencetti, in 1879 completed this work.
Were named after him electroplating, the galvanometer, galvanotaxis, the Galvani voltage Galvano and the moon crater Galvani.
Works
- De renibus atque urethris volatilium
- Treatise on the forces of electricity at the muscle movements ( " De motu viribus electricitatis in musculari "). German publishing house, Frankfurt / M. 1996, ISBN 3-8171-3052- X
- Opere edite ed inedite del Prof. Luigi Galvani. Dall'Olmo, Bologna 1841-1842