Showing posts with label Physics. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Physics. Show all posts

25 April 2019

Giovanni Caselli - inventor

Priest and physicist who created world’s first ‘fax' machine


Although Caselli was ordained as a priest in 1836 he devoted his life to the study of science
Although Caselli was ordained as a priest in
1836 he devoted his life to the study of science
Giovanni Caselli, a physics professor who invented the pantelegraph, the forerunner of the modern fax machine, was born on this day in 1815 in Siena.

Caselli developed a prototype pantelegraph, which was capable of transmitting handwriting and images over long distances via wire telegraph lines, in 1856, some 20 years ahead of the patenting of Alexander Graham Bell’s telephone in the United States. It entered commercial service in France in 1865.

The technology was patented in Europe and the United States in the 1860s, when it was also trialled in Great Britain and Russia, but ultimately in proved too unreliable to achieve universal acceptance and virtually disappeared from popular use until midway through the 20th century.

Caselli spent his early years in Florence studying physics, science, history and religion and was ordained as a priest in the Catholic Church when he was 21.

In 1841 he was appointed tutor to the sons of Count Marquis Sanvitale of Modena in Parma, where he spent eight years before his time there was abruptly ended by expulsion from the city as a result of his participation in an uprising against the ruling House of Austria-Este.

A model of Caselli's device can be seen at the Leonardo da Vinci museum in Milan
A model of Caselli's device can be seen
at the Leonardo da Vinci museum in Milan 
He returned to Florence in 1849, when he became a professor of physics at the University of Florence.  It was at this time that he began to study electrochemistry, electromagnetism, electricity and magnetism. He also launched a journal with the intention of explaining the science of physics in layman's terms.

Alexander Bain and Frederick Bakewell were two other physicists working on similar technology at the same time as Caselli but were unable to achieve the necessary synchronization between the transmitting and receiving parts so they would work together correctly. Caselli, though, built in a regulating clock that made the sending and receiving mechanisms work together.

In Caselli’s device, an image was made using non-conductive ink on tin foil, over which a stylus passed, lightly touching the foil, which conducted electricity where there was no ink and not where there was ink, causing circuit breaks that matched the image.

The signals were then sent along a long distance telegraph line to a receiver, where an electrical stylus reproduced the image line-by-line using blue dye ink on white paper.

In 1856, Caselli presented his prototype to Leopold II, Grand Duke of Tuscany, who was impressed enough to give Caselli some financial support, before he moved to Paris to introduce his invention to Napoleon III.

A 'fax' message that was transmitted between Paris and Lyon using Caselli's pantelegraph in 1862
A 'fax' message that was transmitted between Paris and
Lyon using Caselli's pantelegraph in 1862
Napoleon embraced the technology with great enthusiasm, and between 1857 and 1861 Caselli worked on perfecting his pantelegraph, sometimes known as the Autotelegraph or Universal Telegraph, with the French mechanical engineer Léon Foucault.

After seeing a demonstration of Caselli's improved pantelegraph in 1860, Napoleon gave Caselli the chance to test in within the French national telegraph network, providing him with financial backing. Among the successful tests was one between Paris and Amiens, over a distance of 140km (87 miles) of a document bearing the signature of the composer Gioachino Rossini. 

After a further successful test between Paris and Marseille, commercial operations started in 1865, first between Paris and Lyon line, extending to Marseille in 1867.

After patenting his device in Europe in 1861 the United States in 1863, and receiving the Legion d’Honneur from Napoleon in recognition for his work, Caselli oversaw trials in England and Russia, where Tsar Alexander II used the system to send documents between his palaces in Saint Petersburg and Moscow between 1861 and 1865.

In the first year of operation, Caselli’s pantelegraph transmitted almost 5,000 'faxes'.

Yet Caselli could not develop the technology quickly enough for reliability issues to be solved and eventually interest in it began to decline to the extent that he effectively abandoned it and returned to Florence, where he died in 1891 at the age of 76.

Although in the 1920s, the AT & T Corporation developed a way to transmit images using radio signals, it was not until 1964 that the Xerox Corporation introduced the first commercial fax machine of the kind recognisable today.

Many of Caselli’s patents, letters and proofs of teleautographic transmission are kept at the municipal library of Siena. Others can be found in the archives of the Museo Galileo in Florence.

The shell-shaped Piazza del Campo in Siena is regarded as one of the finest medieval squares in Europe
The shell-shaped Piazza del Campo in Siena is regarded
as one of the finest medieval squares in Europe
Travel tip: 

Siena, where Caselli was born, is famous for its shell-shaped Piazza del Campo, established in the 13th century as an open marketplace on a sloping site between the three communities that eventually merged to form Siena. It is regarded as one of Europe's finest medieval squares. The red brick paving, put down in 1349, fans out from the centre in nine sections. It has become well known as the scene of the historic horse race, the Palio di Siena.  Siena also has a beautiful Duomo - the Cathedral of St Mary of the Assumption - which was designed and completed between 1215 and 1263, its façade built in Tuscan Romanesque style using polychrome marble.


Piazza San Marco in Florence, a short distance from the centre of the city, is the home of the University of Florence
Piazza San Marco in Florence, a short distance from the centre
of the city, is the home of the University of Florence
Travel tip:

The University of Florence, the headquarters of which is in Piazza San Marco in the centre of the city, can trace its roots to the Studium Generale, which was established by the Florentine Republic in 1321. The Studium was recognized by Pope Clement VI in 1349, and included Italy’s first faculty of theology. The Studium became an imperial university in 1364, but was moved to Pisa in 1473 when Lorenzo the Magnificent gained control of Florence. Charles VIII moved it back from 1497–1515, but it was moved to Pisa again when the Medici family returned to power.  The modern university dates from 1859, when a group of institutions formed the Istituto di Studi Pratici e di Perfezionamento, which a year later was recognized as a full-fledged university, and renamed as the University of Florence in 1923.


More reading:

Antonio Meucci - the 'true' inventor of the telephone

Innocenzo Manzetti, the inventor who may have produced the first prototype telephone

The Italian physicist who pioneered the alternating current (AC) system

Also on this day:

Festa della Liberazione

1472: The death of Renaissance polymath Leon Battista Alberti

1973: The death of World War One flying ace Ferruccio Ranza

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22 February 2019

Renato Dulbecco - Nobel Prize-winning physiologist

Research led to major breakthrough in knowledge of cancer


Renato Dulbecco emigrated to the United States 1946 after studying at the University of Turin
Renato Dulbecco emigrated to the United States
1946 after studying at the University of Turin
Renato Dulbecco, a physiologist who shared the 1975 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for his role in drawing a link between genetic mutations and cancer, was born on this day in 1914 in Catanzaro in Calabria.

Through a series of experiments that began in the late 1950s after he had emigrated to the United States, Dulbecco and two colleagues showed that certain viruses could insert their own genes into infected cells and trigger uncontrolled cell growth, a hallmark of cancer.

Their findings transformed the course of cancer research, laying the groundwork for the linking of several viruses to human cancers, including the human papilloma virus, which is responsible for most cervical cancers.

The discovery also provided the first tangible evidence that cancer was caused by genetic mutations, a breakthrough that changed the way scientists thought about cancer and the effects of carcinogens such as tobacco smoke.

Dulbecco, who shared the Nobel Prize with California Institute of Technology (Caltech) colleagues Howard Temin and David Baltimore, then examined how viruses use DNA to store their genetic information and, in his studies of breast cancer, pioneered a technique for identifying cancer cells by the proteins present on their surface.

Dulbecco found that viruses such as the human papilloma virus could cause cell mutations
Dulbecco found that viruses such as the human
papilloma virus could cause cell mutations
His proposal in 1986 to catalogue all human genes can be seen as the beginnings of the Human Genome Project, which was completed in 2003.

The son of a civil engineer, Dulbecco grew up in Liguria after his family moved from Catanzaro to the coastal city of Imperia. He graduated from high school at 16 and went on to the University of Turin, receiving his medical degree in 1936. He became friends there with two other future Nobel prizewinners, Rita Levi-Montalcini and Salvador Luria, who were fellow students.

Immediately upon graduating, he was required to do two years’ military service. He was discharged in 1938 but soon afterwards called up again as Italy entered the Second World War, joining the Italian Army as a medical officer.

His role eventually took him to the Russian front, where he suffered an injury to his shoulder that meant he was sent back to Italy to recuperate. Disillusioned with Mussolini and horrified at learning of the fate of Jews under Hitler, he decided not to return to the Army, joining the resistance instead. He stationed himself in a remote village outside Turin, tending to injured partisans.

After the war, he was briefly involved with politics, firstly on the Committee for National Liberation in Turin and then on the city council, but soon returned to Turin University to study physics and conduct biological research.

Dulbecco's fellow Turin University graduate Salvador Duria also moved to America
Dulbecco's fellow Turin University graduate
Salvador Duria also moved to America
With the encouragement of Levi-Montalcini, who would win a Nobel Prize in 1986 for her work in neurobiology, in 1946, he moved to United States, rejoining Luria, who shared a Nobel in 1969 for discoveries about the genetics of bacteria, at Indiana University, where they studied viruses. In the summer of 1949 he moved to Caltech, where he began his work on animal oncoviruses.

Dulbecco worked with Dr. Marguerite Vogt on a method of determining the amount of polio virus present in cell culture, a step that was vital in the development of polio vaccine, before becoming intrigued by a thesis written by Howard Temin on the connection between viruses and cancer.

He left Caltech in 1962 to move to the Salk Institute, a polio research facility in San Diego, and then in 1972 to the Imperial Cancer Research Fund (now Cancer Research UK) in London.

There was a mixed reaction in Italy when it was learned that ‘their’ Nobel Prize winner had become an American citizen. In fact, his Italian citizenship was revoked, although when he moved back to Italy in 1993 to spend four years as president of the Institute of Biomedical Technologies at National Council of Research in Milan he was made an honorary citizen.

Married twice, with three children, Dulbecco died in La Jolla, California, in 2012, three days before what would have been his 98th birthday.

From its elevated position, Catanzaro has views towards the Ionian Sea and the resort of Catanzaro Lido
From its elevated position, Catanzaro has views towards
the Ionian Sea and the resort of Catanzaro Lido
Travel tip:

Occupying a position 300m (980ft) above the Gulf of Squillace, Catanzaro is known as the City of the Two Seas because, from some vantage points, it is possible to see the Tyrrhenian Sea to the north of the long peninsula occupied by Calabria as well as the Ionian Sea to the south.  The historic centre, which sits at the highest point of the city, includes a 16th century cathedral built on the site of a 12th century Norman cathedral which, despite being virtually destroyed by bombing in 1943, has been impressively restored.  The city is about 15km (9 miles) from Catanzaro Lido, which has a long white beach typical of the Gulf of Squillace.




The waterfront of the Ligurian port city of Imperia, with the Basilica of San Maurizio on top of the hill
The waterfront of the Ligurian port city of Imperia, with
the Basilica of San Maurizio on top of the hill
Travel tip:

The beautiful city of Imperia, on Liguria's Riviera Poniente about 120km (75 miles) west of Genoa and 60km (37 miles) from the border with France, came into being in 1923 when the neighbouring ports of Porto Maurizio and Oneglia, either side of the Impero river, were merged along with several surrounding villages to form one conurbation.  Oneglia, once the property of the Doria family in the 13th century, has become well known for cultivating flowers and olives. Porto Maurizio, originally a Roman settlement called Portus Maurici, has a classical cathedral dedicated to San Maurizio, which was built by Gaetano Cantoni and completed in the early 19th century.



28 January 2019

Giovanni Alfonso Borelli – physiologist and physicist

Neapolitan was the first to explain movement


Giovanni Alfonso Borelli was a  pioneer of biomechanics
Giovanni Alfonso Borelli was a
pioneer of biomechanics
The scientist who was the first to explain muscular movement according to the laws of statics and dynamics, Giovanni Alfonso Borelli, was born on this day in 1608 in Naples.

Borelli was also the first to suggest that comets travel in a parabolic path.

He was appointed professor of mathematics at Messina in 1649 and at Pisa in 1656. After 1675 he lived in Rome under the protection of Christina, the former Queen of Sweden. She had abdicated her throne in 1654, had converted to Catholicism and gone to live in Rome as the guest of the Pope.

Remembered as one of the most learned women of the 17th century, Christina became the protector of many artists, musicians and intellectuals who would visit her in the Palazzo Farnese, where she was allowed to live by the Pope.

Borelli’s best known work is De Motu Animalium - On the Movement of Animals - in which he sought to explain the movements of the animal body on mechanical principles. He is therefore the founder of the iatrophysical school. He dedicated this work to Queen Christina, who had funded it, but he died of pneumonia in 1679 before it was published.

A page from Borelli's De Motu Animalium on arm movement
A page from Borelli's De Motu
Animalium
on arm movement
For this work he has become known as the father of modern biomechanics. The American Society of Biomechanics named its most prestigious award the Giovanni Borelli Award in 1984.

The award is given to scientists for the originality, quality and depth of their research, and its relevance to the field of biomechanics.

Borelli also wrote astronomical works, including a treatise in 1666 that considered the influence of attraction on the satellites of Jupiter.  In a letter published in 1665, using the pseudonym Pier Maria Mutoli, he was the first to suggest the idea that comets travel in a parabolic path.

The Castel Nuovo in Naples, built in the 13th century and rebuilt by Alfonso I in 1453
The Castel Nuovo in Naples, built in the 13th century
and rebuilt by Alfonso I in 1453
Travel tip:

Borelli was born in the Castel Nuovo area of Naples to a Spanish infantryman serving in the city and a young Neapolitan girl. The castle was called ‘nuovo’, new, when it was built in the 13th century to distinguish it from two earlier ones in Naples, Castel d’Ovo and Castel Capuano. Alfonso I, King of Naples and Sicily, had it completely rebuilt in 1453, the year of his triumphant entry into Naples. Alfonso later ordered the construction of the superb Arco di Trionfo, one of the most significant expressions of early Renaissance culture in southern Italy.

The Palazzo Farnese in Rome, once home of the former Queen Christina of Sweden, now houses the French embassy
The Palazzo Farnese in Rome, once home of the former
Queen Christina of Sweden, now houses the French embassy
Travel tip:

Palazzo Farnese, where Borelli would visit his patron, Queen Christina, is one of the most important High Renaissance palaces in Rome. Owned by the Italian republic, the palazzo in Piazza Farnese was given to the French Government in 1936 for a period of 99 years and currently serves as the French embassy in Italy. One of the scenes in Puccini’s opera Tosca is set in Palazzo Farnese.

More reading:

The physicist who inspired Mary Shelley's Frankenstein

The 18th century anatomist who turned pathology into a science

The scientist who gave new 'life' to a dead frog and a new word to the language

Also on this day:

1453: The birth of Renaissance beauty Simonetta Vespucci

1813: The birth of scientist Paolo Gorini

1978: The birth of goalkeeper Gianluigi Buffon


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31 October 2018

Galileo Ferraris - electrical engineer

Pioneer of alternating current (AC) systems


The engineer Galileo Ferraris saw himself as a scientist rather than an entrepreneur
The engineer Galileo Ferraris saw himself
as a scientist rather than an entrepreneur
The physicist and electrical engineer Galileo Ferraris, who was one of the pioneers of the alternating current (AC) system for transmitting electricity and invented the first alternators and induction motors, was born on this day in 1847 in Piedmont.

The AC system was a vital element in the development of electricity as a readily-available source of power in that it made it possible to transport electricity economically and efficiently over long distances.

Ferraris did not benefit financially from his invention, which is still the basis of induction motors in use today. Another scientist, the Serbian-born Nikola Tesla, patented the device after moving to the United States to work for the Edison Corporation.

Tesla had been working simultaneously on creating an induction motor but there is evidence that Ferraris probably developed his first and as such is regarded by many as the unsung hero in his field.

He saw himself as a scientist rather than an entrepreneur and, although there is no suggestion that his ideas were stolen, openly invited visitors to come in and see his lab.  Unlike Tesla, he never intended to start a company to manufacture the motor and even had doubts whether it would work.

One of Ferraris's early motors, currently  in a museum in Sardinia
One of Ferraris's early motors, currently
in a museum in Sardinia
Born in Livorno Vercellese, a small town in the Vercelli province of Piedmont now known as Livorno Ferraris, Galileo Ferraris was the son of a pharmacist and the nephew of a physician in Turin, to whom he was sent at the age of 10 to obtain an education in the classics and the sciences.

Ferraris was was a graduate of the University of Turin and the Scuola d’Applicazione of Turin, emerging with a master's degree in engineering. He remained in the academic world and independently researched the rotary magnetic field.

He experimented with different types of motors and his research and his studies resulted in the development of an alternator, which converted mechanical (rotating) power into electric power as alternating current.

While Tesla sought to patent his device, Ferraris published his research in a paper to the Royal Academy of Sciences in Turin and the alternator as a source of polyphase power became key in the history of electrification, along with the power transformer.

These inventions enabled power to be transmitted by wires economically over considerable distances and electricity to be generated by harnessing the natural power of water, thus enabling power to be available in remote places.

The city of Turin marked the contributions made to science by Ferraris, who also researched in the field of optical instruments, with the creation of a permanent monument at the Royal Italian Industrial Museum of Turin (now the Royal Turin Polytechnic).  From 1934 to 2006, the "Galileo Ferraris" Electrotechnical Institute could be found in Corso Massimo d'Azeglio.

The Palazzo Chiablese di Castell'Apertole, the former Savoy hunting lodge near Livorno Ferraris
The Palazzo Chiablese di Castell'Apertole, the former
Savoy hunting lodge near Livorno Ferraris
Travel tip:

Known at different times as Livorno Piemonte as well as Livorno Vercellese, Livorno Ferraris occupies a wide area of countryside in the province of Vercelli in the plain of the Po river, bisected by the Depretis, Cavour and Ivrea canals. Located about 40km (25 miles) northeast of Turin and about 25km (16 miles) west of the city of Vercelli, it  hosted the conclave for the election of the antipope Benedict XIII in 1384. Nearby is the 18th century Palazzo Chiablese di Castell'Apertole, a former hunting lodge of the Savoy royal family.

The modern Politecnico di Torino of today
The modern Politecnico di Torino of today
Travel tip:

The Royal Turin Polytechnic can be found in Corso Duca degli Abruzzi in the centre of Turin, about 2.5km (1.5 miles) from the Royal Palace. It evolved from the Royal Italian Industrial Museum, which was established in 1862 by Royal Decree as an Italian equivalent of the South Kensington Museum of London and of the Conservatoire des Arts et Métiers of Paris, to promote industrial education and the progress of industry and trade. Parallel with Corso Duca degli Abruzzi is the Corso Galileo Ferraris, a long, straight road that links the Giardino Andrea Guglielminetti with the Stadio Olimpico Grande Torino, the home of Torino football club, a distance of 4.1km (2.5 miles).

More reading:

How Alessandro Volta invented the electric battery

Antonio Meucci - the 'true' inventor of the telephone

The physicist who tried to bring corpses back to life

Also on this day:

1929: The birth of swimmer-turned-actor Bud Spencer

1984: The death of Neapolitan dramatist Eduardo De Filippo


Home

29 October 2018

Fabiola Gianotti - particle physicist

First woman to be director-general of CERN


Fabiola Gianotti - the would-be concert pianist who instead became a brilliant physicist
Fabiola Gianotti - the would-be concert pianist
who instead became a brilliant physicist
The particle physicist Fabiola Gianotti, who in 2016 became the first woman to be made director-general in the 64-year history of the European Organisation for Nuclear Research, was born on this day in 1960 in Rome.

She led one of the two teams of physicists working for the organisation - general known as CERN after its title in French - whose experiments in 2012 resulted in the discovery of the Higgs boson, the particle that explains why some other elementary particles have mass.

The discovery was regarded as so significant in the advancement of scientific knowledge that it was nicknamed the “God particle.”

As the project leader and spokesperson of the ATLAS project at CERN, which involved a collaboration of around 3,000 physicists from 38 countries, Dr. Gianotti announced the discovery of the particle.

Their work involved the Large Hadron Collider (LHC), the world's largest and most powerful particle collider and the largest machine of any kind on the planet, which lies in a tunnel 27km (17 miles) in circumference, 175 metres (574 ft) beneath the France–Switzerland border near Geneva.

Fabiola Gianotti at the Large Hadron Collider site deep underground on the France-Switzerland border
Fabiola Gianotti at the Large Hadron Collider site deep
underground on the France-Switzerland border
Her team were awarded science’s most lucrative award, a special Fundamental Physics Prize worth $3 million. Time magazine named her among its people of the year; Forbes placed her in its top 100 influential women list.

Brought up in Milan the daughter of a geologist from Piedmont who taught her to love nature, and a mother from Sicily who was passionate about music and art, Dr. Gianotti had ambitions to become a prima ballerina as a child, when she dreamt of becoming a dancer with the Bolshoi at Teatro alla Scala in Milan.

She also considered becoming a classical pianist, such was her talent for music. She spent two years at the Milan Conservatory, but after earning a PhD in physics at the University of Milan, she began her career at CERN with a graduate fellowship in 1994.

Fabiola Gianotti was inspired to break the traditional male  domination of particle science by a biography of Marie Curie
Fabiola Gianotti was inspired to break the traditional male
domination of particle science by a biography of Marie Curie
Dr. Gianotti was inspired to devote herself to scientific research after reading a biography of Marie Curie, who developed the theory of radioactivity, techniques for isolating radioactive isotopes, and discovered the elements polonium and radium as well as being the mother of two children.

Even though particle physics has traditionally been a male-dominated domain - even now only 12 percent of the 2,500 physicists and engineers at CERN are women and only 20 per cent of the team that worked on the ATLAS project were women - Dr. Gianotti claims that she has never had a sense that she was discriminated against for being female.

However, she has argued that women in particle physics should be given more support when having children, claiming that a lack of support made it difficult for her to marry and start a family, a decision for which she has expressed regret.

Gianotti on the cover of Time magazine
Gianotti on the cover of Time magazine
The author or co-author of more than 500 publications in peer-reviewed scientific journals, Dr. Gianotti is is a promoter of the “Open Science” movement, in particular the publication of scientific works in open access journals and the development of open access hardware and software in order to spread scientific knowledge to less-privileged countries.

Brought up a Catholic, Gianotti insists that religion and science are not in competition with each other, saying that while science cannot demonstrate or disprove the existence of God, religion has to respect science, and they should co-exist in a climate of tolerance.

She lives in in Switzerland in an apartment with a view of Lake Geneva and Mont Blanc, plays music by her favourite composers on a Yamaha upright piano, has a passion for cooking and Italian culture.

The Milan Conservatory, Italy's largest music college, has a star-studded list of alumni
The Milan Conservatory, Italy's largest music college, has
a star-studded list of alumni
Travel tip:

The Milan Conservatory - also known as Conservatorio di musica “Giuseppe Verdi” di Milano - was established by a royal decree of 1807 in Milan, capital of the Napoleonic Kingdom of Italy. It opened the following year with premises in the cloisters of the Baroque church of Santa Maria della Passione in Via Conservatorio. The largest institute of musical education in Italy, its alumni include Giacomo Puccini, Amilcare Ponchielli, Arrigo Boito, Pietro Mascagni, Riccardo Muti and Ludovico Einaudi.

Da Vinci's The Last Supper is one of the many reasons to visit Milan
Da Vinci's The Last Supper is one of the many
reasons to visit Milan
Travel tip:

Milan, where Gianotti grew up, is a global capital of fashion and design but also a financial hub, the home of the Italian stock exchange. Its historical monuments include the Gothic Duomo di Milano, the Santa Maria delle Grazie convent, which houses Leonardo da Vinci’s mural The Last Supper,  the Sforza Castle, the Teatro alla Scala and the Galleria Vittorio Emanuele II.

More reading:

The scientist from Rome who created the world's first nuclear reactor

How Laura Bassi broke new ground for women in science - 240 years ago

Margherita Hack - astrophysicist who helped make science popular

Also on this day:

1922: Mussolini is appointed Prime Minister

2003: The death of tenor Franco Corelli


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10 April 2018

Giovanni Aldini - physicist

Professor thought to have given Mary Shelley the idea for Frankenstein


Giovanni Aldini picked up the mantle of his uncle, Luigi Galvani, in his experiments with bioelectricity
Giovanni Aldini picked up the mantle of his uncle, Luigi
Galvani, in his experiments with bioelectricity
The physicist and professor Giovanni Aldini, whose experiment in trying to bring life to a human corpse is thought to have inspired Mary Shelley’s novel Frankenstein, was born on this day in 1762 in Bologna.

The nephew of Luigi Galvani, who discovered the phenomenon that became known as galvanism, one of Aldini’s goals in life was to build on his uncle’s work in the field of bioelectricity.

Galvani’s discovery that the limbs of a dead frog could be made to move by the stimulation of electricity sparked an intellectual argument with his rival physicist Alessandro Volta that he found uncomfortable. When he was then removed from his academic and public positions after Bologna became part of the French Cisalpine Republic in the late 18th century, Galvani was unable to progress his experiments as he would have liked.

Aldini essentially picked up his uncle’s mantle and was determined to discover whether the effect of an electrical impulse on the body of a frog could be reproduced in a human being.

Aldini conducing experiments in galvanism, as  depicted in a 19th century book
Aldini conducing experiments in galvanism, as
depicted in a 19th century book
His most famous experiment came in 1803, when he was given permission to test his electrical equipment on the corpse of George Forster shortly after he had been hanged at Newgate Prison in London, following his conviction for the murder of his wife and daughter, whose bodies were found in the Paddington Canal not long after the last sighting of them alive at the nearby Mitre Tavern.

Aldini had chosen to conduct this experiment in England because most other European countries carried out executions by beheading, and he felt needed a corpse that was fully intact.

Forster’s body was taken directly from the gallows to a nearby house, where Aldini conducted experiments using conducting rods and a battery, the existence of which, ironically, he owed to his uncle’s rival, Volta.

In front of an audience of surgeons, Aldini successful made the corpse’s facial muscles contort, causing his jaw to twitch and one eye to open. He was then able to cause the dead body to raise his right arm with a clenched fist, and to produce movement in the thighs and lower legs.

The future Mary Shelley would have been only five at the time yet as she grew up she learned all about Galvani, Volta and Aldini through two friends of her father, Humphry Davy (famously the inventor of the Davy safety lamp) and William Nicholson, who were leading electrical researchers.

Mary Shelley, as portrayed in a miniature painting by Reginald Easton in 1857
Mary Shelley, as portrayed in a miniature
painting by Reginald Easton in 1857
During the summer of 1816, it is known that Mary Shelley was in Geneva with her future husband, the poet Percy Shelley, and Lord Byron, and that among the topics of their conversation was the potential for re-animating a corpse with electricity.

At around the same time, the three friends, along with another writer, John Polidori, decided they would have a competition to see who could write the best horror story.  Mary came up with a tale of a young scientist, Victor Frankenstein, who creates a grotesque, monstrous but humanoid creature, which he brings to life with electrical charges.

The brother of Count Antonio Aldini, a statesman, Aldini followed Galvani in becoming professor of physics at the University of Bologna.

He devoted himself to his scientific work, which was mainly focussed on galvanism, anatomy and its medical applications, along with the construction and illumination of lighthouses, and with experiments for preserving human life and material objects from destruction by fire.

He died in Milan in 1834, bequeathing a considerable sum to found a school of natural science for artisans at Bologna.

A courtyard at the historic Palazzo Poggi in Bologna
A courtyard at the historic Palazzo Poggi in Bologna
Travel tip:

The University of Bologna, the oldest university in continuous use in the world, has sites dotted around the centre of Bologna.  Its headquarters are in the Palazzo Poggi, in Via Zamboni, about 1km (0.62 miles) northeast of the Fountain of Neptune just around the corner from Piazza Maggiore. The palace is adorned with many frescoes painted by Mannerist and early Baroque artists, including Prospero Fontana, Pellegrino Tebaldi and Niccolò dell'Abbate.

The Basilica of San Petronio, with its half-finished facade
The Basilica of San Petronio, with its half-finished facade
Travel tip:

Bologna is a progressive, left-leaning city with a lively student population and considerable history and culture. Italians regard it as one of the country’s most beautiful cities and has the advantage of being not nearly as busy as Rome, Florence and Venice, which tend to the the magnets for overseas visitors.  The Piazza Maggiore, the medieval Asinelli and Garisenda towers and the Basilica of San Petronio, with its half-finished facade - pink marble at the bottom with bare bricks above - are among the main sights.  Another advantage, apart from the lack of crowds, in the summer months are the 45km of porticoed walkways.

More reading:

Luigi Galvani, the father of bioelectricity

Alessandro Volta and the world's first battery

The death of the poet Percy Bysshe Shelley


Also on this day:

1926: Airship leaves Rome on mission to North Pole

1991: The Moby Prince ferry disaster


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29 September 2017

Enrico Fermi – nuclear physicist

Scientist from Rome who created world’s first nuclear reactor


Enrico Fermi discovered how splitting uranium atoms could generate vast amounts of energy
Enrico Fermi discovered how splitting uranium
atoms could generate vast amounts of energy
Enrico Fermi, who has been called the architect of the nuclear age and even the father of the atomic bomb, was born on this day in 1901 in Rome.

Fermi, who won a Nobel Prize in 1938, created the world’s first nuclear reactor, the so-called Chicago Pile-1, after he had settled in the United States, and also worked on the Manhattan Project, which was the code name for the secret US research project aimed at developing nuclear weapons in the Second World War.

The third child of Alberto Fermi, an official in Italy’s Ministry of Railways, and Ida de Gattis, a school teacher, Fermi took an interest in science from an early age, inspired by a book about physics he had discovered in the local market in Campo de’ Fiori in Rome, written in Latin by a Jesuit priest in about 1840.

He read avidly as he was growing up, conducting many experiments. After high school, he was granted a place at the prestigious Scuola Normale Superiore, part of the University of Pisa, where it became clear the depth of knowledge he had already acquired was greater than that of many of his professors. It was not long before they began asking him to organise seminars in quantum physics. He graduated with honours in 1922.

After spending several months in Germany and Holland on scholarships, working alongside renowned professors such as  Max Born and Paul Ehrenfest, he returned to Italy to take up a lectureship at the University of Florence. In 1927 he was appointed Professor of Theoretical Physics at the University of Rome.

Fermi (centre), with his fellow scientists at the University of Pisa, Franco Rasetti and Emilio Segrè
Fermi (centre), with his fellow scientists at the University of
Pisa, Franco Rasetti and Emilio Segrè
In the same year, he married Laura Capon, who came from a respected Jewish family in Rome.  They would soon have two children, Giulio and Nella.

In 1934, Fermi began working with the atom, the area of physics that would define his life. He discovered that nuclear transformation could occur in nearly every element.

One of the elements whose atoms he split was uranium. This led to discovery of slow neutrons, which in turn led to nuclear fission and the production of new elements.

When, in 1938, Fermi was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics "for his work with artificial radioactivity produced by neutrons, and for nuclear reactions brought about by slow neutrons”, it could not have come at a more timely moment.

Benito Mussolini, whose Fascist party Fermi had joined when he was made a member of the Royal Academy of Italy in 1929, had introduced tough new race laws in his support for the German leader Adolf Hitler. The anti-Jewish element of these laws threatened Fermi’s family and he became desperate to leave Italy.

The eerie mushroom cloud formed by the  first test explosion of an atomic bomb
The eerie mushroom cloud formed by the
first test explosion of an atomic bomb
Strict travel restrictions were being implemented, too, but Mussolini wanted Fermi to receive his Nobel award in person at the ceremony in Sweden and allowed him to travel with his family. Once in Stockholm, they made arrangements to escape to America.

Thus Fermi, his wife and their children disembarked a passenger liner in New York in January 1939.  He quickly settled into an academic career in American universities.

Fermi was appointed professor of physics at New York's Columbia University, where he discovered that if uranium neutrons were emitted into fissioning uranium, they could split other uranium atoms, setting off a chain reaction that would release enormous amounts of energy. His experiments led to the first controlled nuclear chain reaction, which he prosaically christened Chicago Pile-1, on December 2, 1942, under Chicago University's athletic stadium.

During the Second World War, Fermi was invited to join the Manhattan Project, which focused on the development of the atomic bomb. Worried that scientists in Germany were close to developing their own bomb, Fermi and other scientists encouraged the US Government to invest in the project without delay.

He witnessed the first test detonation of a nuclear weapon, codenamed Trinity, in a remote area of desert in New Mexico on July 16, 1945.  He advised the US Government on target selection, recommending the bomb be used without warning against an industrial area.

General Leslie R Groves presents Fermi with his Medal of Merit for wartime service to the US
General Leslie R Groves presents Fermi with his
Medal of Merit for wartime service to the US 
After the war, Enrico Fermi was appointed to the General Advisory Committee for the Atomic Energy Commission. In October 1949, the commission met to discuss the development of the hydrogen bomb, a weapon 500 times more powerful than the atomic bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in Japan, which themselves killed 129,000 people.

Fermi was appalled at the prospect, however, opposing it on both technical and moral grounds.

In 1944, Fermi and his wife had become American citizens, and at the end of the war he accepted a professorship at the University of Chicago's Institute for Nuclear Studies, a position which he held until his death. There he turned his attention to high-energy physics, and led investigations into the pion-nucleon interaction.

He died in 1954 at the age of only 53 from stomach cancer. It is thought likely now that he developed the disease as a result of his exposure to radiation, possibly when he witnessed the Trinity explosion, when he reported feeling the heat from the blast, or from his work creating the Chicago reactor.

He confessed to friends during his life that he was aware that he might be at risk but considered scientific advancement more important than his own long-term health.

As well as his Nobel prize, Fermi won many other awards for his research, while others granted to modern scientists bear his name.  Among other things named after him are the Fermilab particle accelerator and physics lab in Batavia, Illinois and the Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope.  Three nuclear reactor installations have been named after him: the Fermi 1 and Fermi 2 nuclear power plants in Newport, Michigan, the Enrico Fermi Nuclear Power Plant at Trino Vercellese in Italy, and the RA-1 Enrico Fermi research reactor in Argentina.

A synthetic element isolated from the debris of the 1952 Ivy Mike nuclear test was named fermium, in honour of Fermi's contributions to the scientific community.

The Basilica of Santa Croce in Florence, known as the Temple of Italian Glories for its many graves of artists, scientists and prominent figures in Italian history, has a plaque commemorating Fermi.

Fermi's birthplace in Via Gaeta in Rome
Fermi's birthplace in Via Gaeta in Rome
Travel tip:

Fermi’s birthplace in Rome was in Via Gaeta, not far from the Termini railway station, and the house is marked with a plaque. The area around Via Gaeta has nothing in particular to recommend it but nearby are the ruins of the Terme di Diocleziano – the Baths of Diocletian – a Roman bathing complex that covered 13 acres and could accommodate up to 3,000 people. The complex today houses one of the four sites of the Museo Nazionale Romana, containing a fascinating collection of objects and artefacts to help visitors build a picture of Roman life in the days of the empire. Also worth visiting at the site is a large and peaceful cloister built from designs by Michelangelo.

The magnificent Basilica of Santa Croce in Florence
The magnificent Basilica of Santa Croce in Florence
Travel tip:

The Basilica of Santa Croce, with its 16 chapels, is the largest Franciscan church in the world, and has been one of Florence’s most impressive buildings since it was completed towards the end of the 14th century. Inside can be found work by many of the great artists of the Renaissance, including Giotto, Cimabue, Donatello, Antonio Canova and Domenico Veneziano. The Basilica is also notable as the burial place of a host of illustrious Italians, such as Michelangelo, Galileo, Machiavelli, the poet Ugo Foscolo, the philosopher Giovanni Gentile and the composer Rossini.



20 February 2016

Laura Bassi – scientist

Ground-breaking academic paved the way for women


This portrait of the physicist Laura Bassi is said to date back to 1732
A portrait of the physicist Laura Bassi,
thought to have been painted in 1732
Brilliant physicist Laura Bassi died on this day in 1778 in Bologna.

She had enjoyed a remarkable career, becoming the first woman to earn a Chair in Science at a university anywhere in the world.

When she was just 13 her family’s physician had recognised her potential and took charge of her education.

When she was 20 he invited philosophers from the University of Bologna along with the Archbishop of Bologna, who later became Pope Benedict XIV, to examine her progress.

They were all impressed and Bassi was admitted to the Bologna Academy of Sciences as an honorary member, the first female ever to be allowed to join.

Her theses at the university showed influences of Isaac Newton’s work on optics and light. She was a key figure in introducing his ideas about physics to Italy.

When she received her degree from the university there was a public celebration in Bologna.

Another of her theses about the property of water led to her being awarded the post of Professor of Physics at the university.

As a woman, she was not allowed to teach at the university so she gave lessons and did experiments in her own home.

She was appointed to the Chair of experimental physics at Bologna University in 1776.

She died two years later, having made physics a lifelong career and broken new ground for women in academic circles.

A street in Bologna and a crater on Venus are named after her.

Laura Bassi was married at the Basilica of San Petronio in 1738
The Basilica of San Petronio in the centre of
Bologna, where Laura Bassi married
Travel tip:

Laura Bassi married Giovanni Giuseppe Veratti, a professor of natural philosophy at the University of Bologna  in 1738 at the Basilica of San Petronio in Bologna. A street in the city to the south of the university is now named Via Laura Bassi Veratti in honour of her.

Bologna hotels by Booking.com

Travel Tip:

The Basilica di San Petronio, where Laura Bassi was married, is the main church of Bologna, located in Piazza Maggiore in the centre of the city. It is the largest brick-built Gothic church in the world. Building work began on the church in 1390 and it was dedicated to San Petronio, who had been the Bishop of Bologna in the fifth century. The facade was designed by Domenico da Varignana and started in 1538 by Giacomo Ranuzzi but was never finished. Despite being Bologna’s most important church, San Petronio is not the city’s cathedral. This is the Duomo di San Pietro, which stands nearby on Via Indipendenza. In the 16th century, the basilica staged the coronation of Charles V to Holy Roman Emperor by Pope Clement VII.

More reading:

How astronomer Caterina Scarpellini discovered a new comet

The particle physicist who scored a first for women in science

Margherita Hack, the astrophysicist who tried to make science fun

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