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

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

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

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

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

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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Ulisse Aldrovandi – naturalist

Professor became fascinated with plants while under house arrest

Ulisse Aldrovandi: a portrait housed at the Accademia
Carrara in Bergamo, attributed to Agostino Carracci

Ulisse Aldrovandi, who is considered to be the father of natural history studies, was born on this day in 1522 in Bologna.

He became renowned for his systematic and accurate observations of animals, plants and minerals and he established the first botanical garden in Bologna, now known as the Orto Botanico dell’Università di Bologna.

Aldrovandi’s gardens were in the grounds of Palazzo Pubblico in Bologna but in 1803 they were moved to their present location in Via Imerio, where they are run by the University of Bologna but are open to the public every day except Sunday.

The professor was also the first person to extensively document neurofibromatosis disease, which is a type of skin tumour.

Aldrovandi, who is sometimes referred to as Aldrovandus or Aldroandi, was born into a noble family. He studied humanities and law at the universities of Bologna and Padua and became a notary. He then became interested in studying philosophy and logic, which he combined with the study of medicine.

Aldrovandi commissioned artists to
illustrate his catalogues of wildlife

He was charged with heresy in 1549, accused of supporting theories doubting the Holy Trinity, and kept under house arrest in Rome until he was absolved in 1550.

During this time he developed an interest in botany, zoology and geology and, as soon as he was free to travel, he organised expeditions to the mountains, countryside, islands and coastal regions of Italy to collect and catalogue plants.

After obtaining a degree in medicine and philosophy in 1553, Aldrovandi started teaching logic and philosophy at the University of Bologna.

He rose to become Professor of Philosophy and then in 1561 became the first Professor of Natural Sciences at the university.

Aldrovandi assembled a collection of curiosities, about 7000 nature specimens, for which he wrote detailed descriptions. He collected plants for an herbarium and preserved more than 4,000 sheets of dried specimens in 16 volumes. He also commissioned artists to make illustrations of his specimens.

After a dispute about the composition of a popular medicine with pharmacists and doctors, Aldrovandi was suspended from all public positions for five years.

Aldrovandi painstakingly dried and
preserved the leaves of plant species

In 1577 he sought the aid of Pope Gregory XIII, who was a cousin of his mother. The Pope wrote to the authorities in Bologna asking for Aldrovandi to be reinstated and also gave him financial aid to help him publish his books.

Aldrovandi left his vast collection of works on botany and zoology to the Senate of Bologna and after his death at the age of 82 in 1605 they were conserved in Palazzo Pubblico and then in Palazzo Poggi.

They were distributed among other libraries in the 19th century but in 1907 some of the collection was brought back to Palazzo Poggi. In 2005 an exhibition to mark the 400th anniversary of Aldrovandi’s death was held there.

A ridge of the moon is named Dorsa Aldrovandi and the plant genus Aldrovanda is also named after him.

The Ulisse Aldrovandi Museum at the Palazzo Poggi

Travel tip:

Palazzo Poggi in Via Zamboni in Bologna is now the headquarters of the University of Bologna and contains the Ulisse Aldrovandi Museum. The palace was built between 1549 and 1560 for the Poggi family and became the Home of the Institute of Sciences in 1714. During the Napoleonic period the various collections became scattered between different museums but at the end of the last century the University set up a project to bring the dispersed collections back to their historic home.

The Aldrovandi Botanical Gardens in Bologna

Travel tip:

One of the main sights in the small town of San Giovanni in Persiceto near Bologna is the Civico Orto Botanico Ulisse Aldrovandi, a municipal botanical garden established in 1985 and named in honour of the naturalist.

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