Macedonio Melloni attended the Academy of Fine Arts of Parma where he had among his teachers Antonio Pasini. In 1818 he earned the first prize for nude drawing. He also devoted himself to private mathematics and physics studies under the guidance of Antonio Lombardini.
College/University
Gallery of Macedonio Melloni
Route de Saclay, 91128 Palaiseau, France
In 1819 Melloni went to Paris to learn the art of engraving, but he also followed informally numerous lessons at the École Polytechnique.
Career
Gallery of Macedonio Melloni
1845
Macedonio Melloni is an inventor of the thermomultiplier and originator of climate science. Around 1845.
Gallery of Macedonio Melloni
Portrait of Macedonio Melloni with order Pour le Mérite.
Achievements
Membership
French Academy of Sciences
In 1835 Macedonio Melloni was elected correspondent of the French Academy of Sciences.
Royal Society
In 1835 Macedonio Melloni was elected a foreign member of the Royal Society in 1839.
Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences
Macedonio Melloni was a member of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences.
Saint Petersburg Academy of Sciences
Macedonio Melloni was a member of the Saint Petersburg Academy of Sciences.
American Academy of Arts and Sciences
Macedonio Melloni was a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.
Royal Prussian Academy of Sciences
Macedonio Melloni was a member of the Royal Prussian Academy of Sciences.
Accademia Nazionale delle Scienze detta dei XL
Macedonio Melloni was a member of the Accademia Nazionale delle Scienze detta dei XL.
Academy of Sciences of Turin
Macedonio Melloni was a member of the Academy of Sciences of Turin.
Macedonio Melloni attended the Academy of Fine Arts of Parma where he had among his teachers Antonio Pasini. In 1818 he earned the first prize for nude drawing. He also devoted himself to private mathematics and physics studies under the guidance of Antonio Lombardini.
Memoir on the Free Transmission of Radiant Heat through different Solid and Liquid Bodies; presented to the Royal Academy of Sciences of Paris, on the 4th of February, 1833
Macedonio Melloni was an Italian physicist and educator. He is known for demonstrating that radiant heat has similar physical properties to those of light.
Background
Ethnicity:
Macedonio Melloni's father was Italian and his mother was French.
Macedonio Melloni was born on April 11, 1798, in Parma, Duchy of Parma (now Emilia-Romagna, Italy) to the family of a wealthy merchant Antonio Melloni and a French woman Rosalie Jabalot.
Education
Macedonio Melloni attended the Academy of Fine Arts of Parma where he had among his teachers Antonio Pasini. In 1818 he earned the first prize for nude drawing. He also devoted himself to private mathematics and physics studies under the guidance of Antonio Lombardini.
In 1819 Melloni went to Paris to learn the art of engraving, but he also followed informally numerous lessons at the École Polytechnique.
Melloni spent his early professional life as a professor of physics at the University of Parma between 1824 and 1830. In 1830 Macedonio Melloni was forced into exile to Florence for having publicly expressed his satisfaction with the overthrow of Charles X in Paris. After a brief return to Parma, he fled to Geneva and again to Paris, where he developed his research on thermal radiation, much appreciated by Michael Faraday.
Melloni taught at Dole and then in Paris. He returned to Italy in 1837, thanks to the favors of Alexander von Humboldt and François Arago. In 1839 Ferdinand II of the Two Sicilies appointed him professor of physics at the University of Naples, director of the Conservatory of arts and crafts and, from 1845, of the Vesuvius Observatory. Destitute from all his positions following his participation in the uprisings of 1848, he died of cholera in his home in Portici in 1854.
Little is known about Melloni's religious views except that he belonged to Roman Catholic denomination and listed as Catholic physicist in 1910 New Catholic Dictionary.
Politics
Melloni possessed liberal political views which became a reason for his exile from Parma and losing his posts in Naples.
Views
As a physicist Melloni was concerned mainly with the properties of radiant heat or catorific radiation as it was then called. Early in his career Melloni became convinced that, while radiant heat is a wave in ether as is light, it is not the same kind of a disturbance as a ray of light. His first experiments were designed to pinpoint the differences between these two kinds of propagation.
In 1832 Melloni attempted to show that, contrary to general belief, radiant heat and light are not transmitted in the same amounts through a given transparent body. In his experiment he demonstrated that the quantity of heat a body transmits is not related in any degree to its transparency, that is, to the amount of light which it can transmit. In fact, the only relationship he could find was between the body’s permeability to heat and its index of refraction. This strengthened him in his belief that heat rays and light are both ethereal vibrations but not the same kind of vibration.
Between 1833 and 1840 Melloni continued in his attempts to find the differences between heat and light. His experimental accounts, if read singly, often seem to be showing that heat and light are the same, not that they differ. But Melloni expected to find many similarities - since both are ethereal vibrations. What he sought were the differences in their effects. He showed in 1833 that the same body has different effects on heat and light; radiant heat, for example, is unaffected by the same polarization arrangement that extinguishes light. By 1835 Melloni was certain “…that light and radiant heat are effects directly produced by two different causes”. These causes are both molecular vibrations that set the ether in motion, but the molecules move differently when producing the vibrations of heat than they do when producing those of light. As he continued in his investigations he found that the rays of heat can actually be polarized, but in a way bearing no relation to the effects of the same polarization apparatus on light - further evidence, he thought, of the different origins of these two kinds of ethereal motions.
Between 1834 and 1840 Melloni began to concentrate on the behavior of bodies transmitting heat radiation. He was by then certain that heat and light are distinct modes of the same process, ethereal propagation, and he looked for those details of the transfer of heat that distinguished it from that of light. His theoretical distinction between the two kinds of waves aided him because he was always looking for differences and not similarities. For example, it was held that the amount of light that is transmitted by a body depends somehow upon the state of its surface, upon its degree of smoothness or lack of irregularities. Melloni, because he distinguished between heat and light, did not believe that this would be strictly true for heat. In 1839 he tried to show that, if a smooth‐surfaced body transmits heat more readily than one with a rough surface, it is not because of some special surface regularity, as it is with light, but because the polishing necessary to make the surface smooth had so altered its elasticity that the rate at which it could transmit the vibrations of heat was also changed.
Membership
In 1835 Melloni was elected a correspondent of the French Academy of Sciences and in 1839 a foreign member of the Royal Society. He also was a member of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences, Saint Petersburg Academy of Sciences, American Academy of Arts and Sciences, Royal Prussian Academy of Sciences, Accademia Nazionale delle Scienze detta dei XL, Academy of Sciences of Turin.
French Academy of Sciences
,
France
Royal Society
,
United Kingdom
Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences
,
Sweden
Saint Petersburg Academy of Sciences
,
Russia
American Academy of Arts and Sciences
,
United States
Royal Prussian Academy of Sciences
,
Kingdom of Prussia
Accademia Nazionale delle Scienze detta dei XL
,
Kingdom of Lombardy-Venetia
Academy of Sciences of Turin
,
Kingdom of Piedmont-Sardinia
Interests
art
Connections
Macedonio Melloni married Augusta Brugnel Philipson in 1843 and the couple had three daughters.