Abstract
ON June 17 occurs the centenary of the birth of the Italian physicist Antonio Pacinotti, who contributed to the early development of the dynamo. Born at Pisa, where his father, Luigi Pacinotti, held the chair of physics, he worked in the physical laboratory of the University, and it was while a youth of eighteen serving in the Garibaldean wars that he pondered over electromagnetic problems. At the age of nineteen he devised an electric generator with a ring armature which he described in II Nuovo Ciminto of May 3, 1865. Though, unlike his contemporaries Jedlik and Hjorth, he did not conceive the possibility of self-excitation, his machine had outstanding results. When twenty-one Pacinotti became assistant astronomer at Florence and afterwards held professorships of physics at Bologna (1864), Cagliari (1873) and Pisa (1882), to which place he returned on his father's death. His achievements were recognized in many ways, and in 1902 the Institution of Electrical Engineers elected him an honorary member. He died at Pisa on March 25, 1912. The seventy-fifth anniversary of his invention was commemorated at Pisa in 1934. A life of Pacinotti has been written by Prof. Polvani, of the University of Milan.
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Antonio Pacinotti (1841–1912). Nature 147, 743 (1941). https://doi.org/10.1038/147743b0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/147743b0