*Alessandro Volta

Born February 18, 1745, in Italy, Culm.

Died on March 5, 1827 (82 years).

Italian Physicist

* Volta was born and educated in Como, Italy , where he became professor of physics at the Royal School in 1774 . His passion had always been the study of electricity , and as a young student he wrote a Latin poem in his fascinating new discovery. Vi attractiva ignis electrici ac phaenomenis inde pendentibus was his first scientific book. Despite his genius from a young age , he began to speak only when he was four years old .

* In 1751, when six, he was sent to the Jesuit school because his family’s interest was for him to follow an ecclesiastical career, but in 1759, just fourteen, he decided to study physics, and two years later, he left the Jesuit school and gave up the ecclesiastical career. In 1775 he enhanced the electrophorus, a machine that produces static electricity . Volta is commonly credited as the inventor of this machine but it was actually invented three years earlier.

* He studied the chemistry of gases between 1776 and 1778. After reading an essay by Benjamin Franklin on "flammable air " and carefully looking it up in Italy, Volta discovered methane . In November 1776, Volta found methane in Lake Maggiore; in 1778 he was able to isolate methane .

* In 1779 he became professor of physics at the University of Pavia, a position he held for 25 years. In 1794 Peregrini Volta married Teresa , daughter of Count Ludovico Peregrini . The couple had three children .

* Back in September 1801, he travelled to Paris at the invitation of the emperor Napoleon Bonaparte, to show the features of his invention (the battery) at the Institut de France . And, in honor of his work in the field of electricity , Napoleon appointed him Count Volta in 1810 .

* Volta died in 1927 and is buried in the city of Como, Italy . The " Voltiano Temple " near Lake Como is devoted to the work of Italian physicist museum: their original instruments and papers are on display there.

Sources:

http://pt.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alessandro_Volta

Miriam Lopes,

7º A

April 2014