Boscovich RG
Nickname/Alias: Rudjer Josip Boskovic
Achievements: He made major advances in a number of theoretical and practical disciplines: math, astronomy, optics, geodesy and instrumentation.
Born: May 18, 1711; Dubrovnik, Croatia
Died: February 13, 1787; Milan, Italy
Field & Discipline: Science; Mathematics; Astronomy; Physics; Geoscience
Language: Italian; Latin
Father: Nicola Boscovich
Mother: Paola Bettera
Siblings: six
Spouse: None
Children: None
Education: Jesuit College, Dubrovnik; Collegium Romanum, Rome.
Major Work:
The Theory of Natural Philosophy
Life & Times:
Boscovich was a brilliant and hardworking student. He became a Jesuit and in 1735, at the Collegium Romanum, in Rome, he began studying Newton’s work and promoting the new Newtonian philosophy.
Boscovich was involved in astronomical problems from an early stage: the rotation of the sun, the transit of Mercury, the instruments needed for all aspects of astronomy, and comets. He entered a competition to calculate the mutual perturbations of Jupiter and Saturn (set by the Paris Academy of Science) which was won by [lost competition to] Euler*.
In 1740 he was made Professor of Mathematics and in 1754 published a math textbook. In 1743 he discovered and excavated a Roman villa at Tusculanum, outside Frascati, and in 1750 published a study of the obelisk in Campo Marzio, Rome.
In 1753 he theorized that the Moon was surrounded by an atmosphere, and investigated a tornade that had hit Rome in 1749 in terms of [used theory of] Hales*’ theory of “fixed air.”
In 1757 he represented (and won the case) the Italian Republic of Lucca at the Imperial court in Vienna over a water-rights row with the Duchy of Tuscany. While doing this he also wrote a major book: The Theory of Natural Philosophy.
During this period he theorized that mountains were the result of subterranean heat. He studied the density and shape of the Earth and ways of measuring gravitation. He was involved in measuring two meridians from Rome to Rimini, and initiated meridian measurements in Austria, Piedmont and Pennsylvania.
In 1759, fed up with colleagues’ criticism of his “modernizing” educational ideas, Boscovich accepted an invitation from the Paris Academy of Sciences and spent six enjoyable months in that city.
In 1760 he headed for London, visited Oxford and Cambridge, met [met] Franklin* and other luminaries, was elected to the Royal Society, and persuaded the Society to set up an expedition to observe the 1761 transit of Venus.
Boscovich had planned to observe the transit in Istanbul but got there too late. In all he spent the next two years traveling: Flanders, Holland, Germany, Holland, Bulgaria, Moldavia and Poland (where he spent some time). He finally returned to Rome in November 1763.
At this time he was also involved on a commission to study the problem of cracks which had appeared in the cupola of St Peter’s in Rome.
He was then asked by the Papal authorities to help with draining the Pontine marshes. He also produced studies of redirection of the River Tiber, and in 1764 produced a plan for the harbor of Rimini and in 1771 that of Savona.
In 1765 he was made Professor of Math at the northern Italian university of Pavia and played a leading role in setting up the Jesuit observatory at Brera near Milan.
The UK Royal Society invited him to go to California for another transit observation but political problems prevented him.
In 1770 he moved to the department of optics and astronomy at the Palatine School in Milan, but in 1772 he was relieved of his job, and a year later the Pope suppressed the Jesuit order.
Boscovich moved back to Paris and a job as head of optics for the French Navy. He also became a French subject. In 1746 he had a row with [had disagreement with] Laplace* over how to measure the path of a comet.
In 1782 Boscovich finally returned to Italy and settled in Bassano, where three years later he published his 5-vol.Works.
Boscovich is perhaps best remembered for his ideas on matter. Influenced by both [influenced by] Leibniz* and [influenced by] Newton* (Boscovich was one of the first Continental European scientists to accept Newton’s gravitation theory), he came up with a “universal law of forces.”
This stated that there were two forces acting on particles: repulsive and attractive. At a distance the force was attractive, but the closer particles became, the more repulsive the force, so that the particles could never actually make contact. There were “equilibrium” boundaries between these forces where the two forces balanced out.
Boscovich saw fundamental particles as indivisible “points” possessing inertia and interacting among each other. Matter consisted of numbers of these “areas of interacting force.” Some people think Boscovich was anticipating the “field” concept of later scientists like [may have prefigured] Faraday*
In 1785 he came back again to the observatory he had founded at Brera. He died of a lung ailment.
Extra Connections: He was a friend of [a pal of] Voltaire*
He influenced the work of [influenced work of] Wollaston*
Assessment: One of the last great polymaths, and in some areas far ahead of his time.
Oneliner: Ruggero Boscovich, pioneer of atomic theory.
Bibliography:
- Dictionary of Scientific Biography.
- Encyclopedia Britannica.
- Whyte, Lancelot Law Roger Joseph Boscovich, S.J. New York: Fordham Press, 1961.