Luigi Aloisio Galvani was an Italian physician, physicist, biologist, and philosopher. One of the early pioneers of bioelectricity, he is known for his extraordinary work on the nature and effects of electricity in an animal tissue, which later led to the invention of the voltaic pile.
Background
Luigi Galvani was born on September 9, 1737, in Bologna, Italy. He was the son of Domenico Galvani and Barbara Foschi. Domenico was a goldsmith and Barbara was his fourth wife. His family was not aristocratic, but they could afford to send at least one of their sons to study at a university.
Education
As a young man Luigi wished to take religious vows, but his parents persuaded him to go to university instead. Around 1755, Galvani entered the Faculty of the Arts of the University of Bologna. He studied with several leading medical teachers of his time, including Jacopo Bartolomeo Beccari and Domenico Galeazzi. He received his degree in medicine and philosophy on 15 July 1759.
After graduation from the University of Bologna, Luigi Galvani supplemented his own research and practice as an honorary lecturer at the university. His earliest published papers covered a wide range of topics, from the anatomy of bones to the urinary tracts of birds.
Galvani became a professor of anatomy and surgery at the university, taking the position of his father-in-law after he died. In the 1770s, Galvani's focus shifted from anatomy to the relationship between electricity and life.
As with many scientific discoveries, a colorful story is told about the accidental revelation of bioelectricity. According to Galvani himself, one day he observed his assistant using a scalpel on a nerve in a frog's leg. When a nearby electric generator created a spark, the frog's leg twitched.
This observation prompted Galvani to develop his famous experiment. He spent years testing his hypothesis - that electricity can enter a nerve and force a contraction - with a variety of metals.
Later, Galvani was able to cause muscular contraction without a source of electrostatic charge by touching the frog's nerve with different metals. After further experimenting with natural (i.e., lightning) and artificial (i.e., friction) electricity, he concluded that animal tissue contained its own innate vital force, which he termed "animal electricity."
He believed "animal electricity" to be a third form of electricity - a view that wasn't altogether uncommon in the 18th century. While these findings were revelatory, astonishing many in the scientific community at the time, it took a contemporary of Galvani's, Alessandro Volta, to fine-tune the meaning of Galvani's discoveries.
A professor of physics, Volta was among the first to mount a serious response to Galvani’s experiments. Volta proved that the electricity did not emerge from the animal tissue itself but from the effect produced by the contact of two different metals in a moist environment (a human tongue, for instance).
Galvani would attempt to respond to Volta’s conclusions by doggedly defending his theory of "animal electricity," but the onset of personal tragedies (his wife died in 1790) and the political momentum of the French Revolution prevented him from pursuing his response.
Napoleon's troops occupied Northern Italy (including Bologna) and in 1797 academics were required to take an oath of allegiance to the republic declared by Napoleon. Galvani refused and was forced to leave his position. Without income, Galvani moved back to his childhood home.
His works (Opere di Luigi Galvani) were collected and published by the Academy of Sciences of the Institute of Bologna. The following are some of the titles, with the original dates of publication in the "Antichi Commentari" of the Bologna Institute: "Thesis: De Ossibus" (1762); "De Renibus atque Ureteribus Volatilium" (1767); "De Volatilium Aure" (1768-70); "De Viribus Electricitatis in motu musculari commentarius" (1791), reprinted at Modena, 1792, with a note and dissertation by Gio. Aldini; translated by Mayer into German (Prague, 1793), and again published as a volume of Ostwald's "Klassiker" (Leipzig, 1894); "Dell' uso e dell' attività dell' arco conduttore nelle contrazioni de' muscoli" (1794); "Memorie sulla elettricità animale" (1797).
Galvani was by nature courageous and religious. It is reported by Alibert that he never ended his lessons "without exhorting his hearers and leading them back to the idea of that eternal Providence, which develops, conserves, and circulates life among so many divers beings."
Politics
Galvani resigned from the University of Bologna because he did not take the civil oath demanded by the Cisalpine Republic, it was contrary to his political and religious convictions.
Views
Galvani began to experiment with muscular stimulation by electrical means. His notebooks indicate that, from the early 1780s, animal electricity was his major field of investigation. Galvani published his findings in 1791. He concluded that animal tissue contained a neglected innate, vital force, which he termed "animal electricity," which activated nerve and muscle when spanned by metal probes. He believed that this new force was a form of electricity in addition to the "natural" form that is produced by lightning and to the "artificial" form that is produced by friction (static electricity). He considered the brain to be the most important organ for the secretion of this "electric fluid" and the nerves to be conductors of the fluid. Galvani was correct in attributing muscular contractions to an electrical stimulus but wrong in identifying it as "animal electricity."
Connections
By the end of the 1760s, Galvani had married Lucia Galeazzi, the daughter of a former professor. They had no children.