Giovanni Schiaparelli
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| Giovanni Schiaparelli | |
 Giovanni Schiaparelli
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| Born | March 14, 1835 Savigliano[1] |
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| Died | July 4, 1910 (aged 75) |
| Citizenship | Italian |
| Fields | Astronomy |
Giovanni Virginio Schiaparelli (March 14, 1835 – July 4, 1910) was an Italian astronomer and science historian. He studied at the University of Turin and Berlin Observatory. In 1859-1860 he worked in Pulkovo Observatory and then worked for over forty years at Brera Observatory. He was also a senator of the Kingdom of Italy, a member of the Accademia dei Lincei, the Accademia delle Scienze di Torino and the Regio Istituto Lombardo, and is particularly known for his studies of Mars. His niece, Elsa Schiaparelli, became a famed couturiere.
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[edit] Mars
Among Schiaparelli's contributions are his telescopic observations of Mars. In his initial observations, he named the "seas" and "continents" of Mars. During the planet's "Great Opposition" of 1877, he observed a dense network of linear structures on the surface of Mars which he called "canali" in Italian, meaning "channels" but mistranslated as "canals". While the latter term indicates an artificial construction, the former indicates the connotation that it can also be a natural configuration of the land. From this incorrect translation, various assumptions about life on Mars derived, as the "canals" of Mars soon became famous, giving rise to waves of hypotheses, speculation and folklore about the possibility of life on Mars. Among the most fervent supporters of the artificial canals was the famous American astronomer Percival Lowell who spent much of his life trying to prove the existence of intelligent life on the red planet. Later, however, with notable thanks to the observations of Italian astronomer Vicenzo Cerulli, scientists ascertained that the famous channels were actually mere optical illusions
In his book Life on Mars, Schiaparelli writes: "Rather than true channels in a form familiar to us, we must imagine depressions in the soil that are not very deep, extended in a straight direction for thousands of miles, over a width of 100, 200 kilometers and maybe more. I have already pointed out that, in the absence of rain on Mars, these channels are probably the main mechanism by which the water (and with it organic life) can spread on the dry surface of the planet."
[edit] Astronomy and history of science
An observer of objects in the solar system, Schiaparelli worked with binary stars, discovered the asteroid 69 Hesperia on April 26, 1861, and demonstrated that the Perseids and Leonids meteor showers were associated with comets. He proved, for example, that the orbit of the Leonids meteor shower coincided with that of the Comet Tempel-Tuttle. These observations led the astronomer to formulate the hypothesis, subsequently proved to be very exact, that the meteor showers could be the trails of comets.
Schiaparelli was a scholar of the history of classical astronomy. He was the first to realize that the concentric spheres of Eudoxus of Cnidus and Callippus, unlike those used by many astronomers of later times, were not to be taken as material objects, but only as part of an algorithm similar to the modern Fourier series.
[edit] Honors and awards
Awards
- Gold Medal of the Royal Astronomical Society (1872)
- Bruce Medal (1902)
Named after him
- Asteroid 4062 Schiaparelli
- The crater Schiaparelli on the Moon
- The crater Schiaparelli on Mars
[edit] Selected writings
- 1873 - Le stelle cadenti (The Falling Stars)
- 1893 - La vita sul pianeta Marte (Life on Mars)
- 1925 - Scritti sulla storia della astronomia antica (Writings on the History of Classical Astronomy) in three volumes. Bologna. Reprint: Milano, Mimesis, 1997.
[edit] References
[edit] Further reading
- "Schiaparelli, Giovanni Virginio (1835-1910)" - biography from http://www.daviddarling.info/
- Obituaries: G. V. Schiaparelli, J. G. Galle, J. B. N. Hennessey J. Coles, J. E. Gore in The Observatory, Vol. 33, p. 311-318, August 1910
[edit] External links
Source texts from Giovanni Schiaparelli.- Le Mani su Marte: I diari di G.V. Schiaparelli
- La Vita Sul Pianeta Marte at Project Gutenberg
- Giovanni Schiaparelli
- Obituaries
