SCHIAPARELLI, GIOVANNI VIRGINIO (1835-191o)

This article appears in Volume V24, Page 323 of the Encyclopedia Britannica.

Encyclopedia Britannica - Main :: SAR-SCY

SCHIAPARELLI, GIOVANNI VIRGINIO (1835-191o) , Italian astronomer and senator of the kingdom of Italy, was born on the 14th of

March

1835 at Savigliano in Piedmont. He entered Turin university in 1850, and graduated in 1854. Two years later he went to Berlin to study astronomy under Encke, and in 1859 was appointed assistant observer at Pulkova, a post which he resigned in 186o for a similar one at Brera,

Milan

MILAN
MILAN (Ital. Milano, Ger. Mailand, anc. Mediolanum, q.v.)

. On the death of Francesco Carlini (b. 1783) in 1862, Schiaparelli succeeded to the directorship, a position which' he held until 1900. He died at

Milan

MILAN
MILAN (Ital. Milano, Ger. Mailand, anc. Mediolanum, q.v.)

on the 4th of July 191o.
Schiaparelli was primarily an observerhis first discovery was of the asteroid Hesperia in 1861but he had also considerable mathematical gifts, as is shown in his treatment of orbital motions, published in 1864, and in other papers. His

great

GREAT

contribution to astronomy

dates

DATES

from 1866, when he showed that meteors or

shooting

SHOOTING

stars traverse space in cometary orbits, and, in particular, that the orbits of the Perseids and Comet III., 1862, and of the Leonids and Comet I., 1866, were practically the same. These discoveries, subsequently amplified in his Le Stelle cadenti (1873) and in his Nome
per le osservazioni dellestelle cadenti dei bolidi (1896) gained for him the
Lalande prize of the

Academy

ACADEMY, GREEK
ACADEMY, ROYAL

of Sciences, Paris, in 1868, and the gold medal and foreign associateship of the Royal Astronomical Society in 1872. He next worked on the

double

stars, but his result have only been partially published. This labour was followed in
1877 by observations of the surface of Mars, whereon he detected, among other peculiar characters, certain streaky markings or canals, the nature and origin of which is still controversial (see MARS). Mercury and

Venus

VENUS

were also studied, and he concluded that these planets rotated on their axes in the same time as they revolved about the sun ; but these views are questioned. He also discussed many other problems, such as stellar distribution, the extent of the universe, &c., whilst at Brera. On his retirement he turned to the astronomy of the Hebrews and Babylonians; his earlier results are given in his L' Astronomia nell' antico Testamento (1903), a

work

WORK

which has been translated into English and German, whilst later ones are to be found in various

journals

JOURNALS

, the last being in Scientia (1908).

End of Article: SCHIAPARELLI, GIOVANNI VIRGINIO (1835-191o)

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