Roger Joseph Boscovich
Rugjer Josip Bošković ( born May 18, in 1711 in Ragusa, the city 's Republic of Ragusa, † February 12, 1787 in Milan, Duchy of Milan ) was a mathematician, physicist and Catholic priest who worked in astronomy, natural philosophy and poetry as well as an engineer and surveyor had.
- 5.1 Contributions to astronomy, geodesy, technology and poetry
- 5.2 Bošković and building physics
- 5.3 Poems and Aurora Borealis
Variety of names and activities
In the literature Bošković is present under the following notations:
Bošković stands out among his contemporaries produced by the diversity of its activities. He is one of the last universal scholar of southern Europe. Most of his life he spent in Italy. As a scientist and consultant, he was also in the Papal States, in Austria and France operate, and in the diplomatic service and as a poet.
His name is associated today with major advances in geodesy, adjustment theory and the philosophy of nature, as well as with the early days of atomic physics. Also, as reviewers for vulnerable monumental buildings he has rendered outstanding. The six decades of his scientific activity spread across ten European countries and about 15 university towns.
From Ragusa in the Lombardy
His parents were Nikola Bošković, farmer from the village of Orahov Do in Herzegovina and Paola Bettera, a Dubrovnikerin Romanesque origin.
As a boy Rugjer attended the prestigious Jesuit high school of his native city of Ragusa, where he stood out because of its high ability in science and languages soon. The age of 14 he was sent for further studies in Rome, where he joined later in the Jesuit Order. On the Roman College, he received extensive training in natural sciences, philosophy and theology.
Even at the high school (1723 ) published Bošković first works of astronomy and geodesy. The next three decades, he lived mainly in Rome, where he was ordained a priest in 1744. In the same year he was appointed as a college professor of mathematics and philosophy at the Collegium Romanum.
Scientist and diplomat in Europe
Bošković counted with Joseph Liesganig, Lemaine and another to those involved in research Jesuits, who dealt extensively with new trends in physics and the study of the earth. He was fascinated by Newton's theory of gravitation and defended it against numerous attacks.
Between 1750 and 1753 he conducted on behalf of the Pope, the measurement of a degree from Rome to Rimini, where a 200- kilometer-long arc of the meridian was applied to determine the local radius of the earth and astrogeodätisch measured. Boškovićs contacts with the state survey of the then Great Powers Austria and France led him to search for methods of compensation calculation to get out more - optimally derive the parameters of the earth's shape degree measurements - slightly contradictory.
1756 brought him his first diplomatic trip to the central Italian and Lucca to Vienna. Three years later he left Rome and traveled to Paris a year later to London, Flanders and Germany. Other travels took him to Poland and Warsaw, as well as in the Ottoman capital Constantinople Opel.
Contact with numerous researchers and philosophers
Its universal way of thinking, sociability and multidisciplinary interests Bošković had contact with numerous well-known researchers and thinkers. Among them are particularly worthy of mention:
- Several monarchs and popes, numerous ministers and diplomats,
- Scientists such as Bradley, Clairaut, Franklin, Lalande, Laplace, Mairan, Michell and various philosophers
- Geoscientists Bouguer, Liesganig, Lemaine, Maire, Maupertuis and Others
- The astronomer in Graz and later ( from 1753) working in Vienna Karl Scherffer,
- However, longer professional enmities, eg d' Alembert.
Astronomy and optics in Italy and France
In 1763 he joined a professorship at the University of Pavia, but soon moved to Paris and taught in Milan later. At the nearby College of Brera, he ran the establishment of an observatory and let them provide for at his own cost. Nature of His special research topics included the optics, also solar physics and the determination of its rotation by observation of sunspots.
In the following years Bošković 's diplomatic skill was asked again when it became the dissolution of the Jesuit Order. After this turmoil he was in 1773 in France's Marine for " Director of the optics ." The king endowed him with a salary of 8,000 livres. Soon, however, he was - with hostility by d' Alembert and other French scholars, so he resigned his office and turned to Bassano, where he took care of the edition of his works - as part of the Jesuit persecution.
Finally, he returned in 72 years back to Milan, where he died five years later in mental confusion.
The lunar crater Boscovich is named after the.
From Boškovićs research in physics and astronomy
In northern Italy Bošković is counted among the most important scientists of the 18th century, and applies in addition to Croatia Nikola Tesla be the most outstanding physicists of the country. Numerous researchers of the Southeast European area related to his pioneering work, among which stands out his dynamic atomism.
It is a precisely formulated system based on Newtonian mechanics. This work inspired Michael Faraday to its electrical field theory. In an essay on natural philosophy and criticism of religion states: According to J. Boscovich are the " prima materiae elementary " of his atomic theory " puncta penitus inextensa et indivisibilia, a se invicem aliquo intervallo disiuncta " ( Theor. philos 1763, p 41. ).
Also, in another context fascinated Bošković the mental conception of mass points - he led them systematically as part of mathematical models in the physics.
Contributions to astronomy, geodesy, art and poetry
Bošković also made important contributions to astronomy. Among them was a method for computing the orbit of a planet from three measured positions in the night sky, and the first geometrical method for calculating the equator of a rotating celestial body from three observations of its surface form. He also determined the rotational elements of the sun from observations of sunspots.
For a similar task in the above mentioned degree measurement from 1750 to 1753, he developed a computational method to balance the contradictions occurring small by minimizing the absolute sum of residuals ( residual error remaining ). At Carl Friedrich Gauss notes found on Boškovićs work to " orbit determination of the celestial bodies " and deflection of the vertical, the asteroid Ceres, and as for the Hannover'sche land surveying were useful later.
Bošković and building physics
In several libraries of southern Europe to report Bošković 's found on the statics of large buildings. The two best known cases are St. Peter's Basilica ( 1742) and the Vienna Court Library ( 1763). To the latter Empress Maria Theresa invited the envoys of Lucca as the Viennese court was staying scholars to support the architect Nikolaus Pacassi in saving the threatened collapse of the dome ceremonial hall.
His reputation as a civil engineer owes Bošković a theoretically and practically well-founded opinion on the St. Peter's Basilica in Rome in 1742, which he created with the Franciscan Fathers and math professors Thomas Le Seurat and François Jacquier. It is considered the first known static calculation and was ( by Hans Straub ) as " the birth of civil engineering ". In this world's highest dome, clear cracks had shown; it should be explored their causes and suggestions for repairing the damage will be developed. On the theory of operations was the " mathematical physics " specifically asked. In the introduction to their report they wrote: " We may be obliged to apologize to the many who prefer not only the practice of theory, but keep the first alone is appropriate and necessary, whereas the second was perhaps even harmful. "
Poems and Aurora Borealis
Bošković wrote primarily in Latin, but also French and Italian. His Latin style is classic and seems in part to a little old fashioned. He wrote his own poems, but also issued such from friends and commented it scientifically.
The first ( 1747 ) was a poem of his teacher Caroli Neceti about the Aurora Borealis - the northern lights. Boškovićs ideas of this effect of the ionosphere were similar to those of Mairan, but their height was still completely unknown. One publication from December 1737, he pointed to 825 miles - which, interestingly, is much higher than you zubilligte in the 19th century, the Earth's atmosphere.
The second "scientific poem" (1755 ) was from Father Benedict Stay and negotiated by the modern philosophy. The more modern were Bošković 's research topics (such as Newton's theory of gravity ), the freer was also the style of his writings.
The most significant works
- De expeditione ad dimetiendos dui meridiani gradus, Rome 1755
- Journal d'un voyage de Constantinople en Pologne, Paris 1772
- Theoria Philosophiae naturalis redacta ad legem unicam Virium in natura existentium, Vienna 1758, 2nd edition Venice 1763rd