Rudjer Boskovic

Roger Joseph (Ruggero Giuseppe) Boscovich (May 18, 1711 – February 13, 1787) was a physicist, astronomer, mathematician, philosopher, diplomat, poet, and Jesuit from Ragusa (then an independent state, today Dubrovnik in Croatia) who later lived in England, France and Italy.He is famous for his atomic theory, given as a clear, precisely-formulated system utilizing principles of Newtonian mechanics. This work inspired Michael Faraday to develop field theory for electromagnetic interaction, and was even a basis for Albert Einstein's attempts for a unified field theory, according to Einstein's coworker Lancelot Law Whyte[1]. Boscovich also gave many important contributions to astronomy, including the first geometric procedure for determining the equator of a rotating planet from three observations of a surface feature and for computing the orbit of a planet from three observations of its position.
Boscovich was born on May 18 1711 in the Republic of Ragusa, an independent republic at the time. He was the seventh child of Nikola Boškovic, a merchant, who hailed from Orahov Do, near Ravno, in Herzegovina. His father died when Roger was ten, because of colic complications.Roger's mother, Paola Bettera, was a member of a cultivated Italian merchant family. She had nine children: Roger was her eighth child and the youngest of six sons.[2] At the age of 8 or 9, after acquiring the rudiments of reading and writing from the priest Nicola (Nikot) Nicchei of the Church of St Nicholas, Roger was sent for his schooling to the local Jesuit Collegium Regusinum. During his early studies Roger Boscovich had shown a distinct propensity for further intellectual development. He had gained a reputation at school for having an easy memory and a quick, deep mind. On September 16, 1725, Roger Boscovich left Ragusa to Rome. He was in the care of two Jesuit priests who took him to the Society of Jesus, famous for its education of youth and at that time having some 800 establishments and 200,000 pupils under its control throughout the world. We learn nothing from Boscovich himself from the time he entered the novitiate to 1731, but it was the usual practice for novices to spend the first two years not in the Collegium Romanum, but in S. Andrea delle Fratte on the Quirinal, the highest of the seven hills of Ancient Rome. There, he studied mathematics and physics; and so brilliant was his progress in these sciences that in 1740 he was appointed professor of mathematics in the college.[3]He was especially appropriate for this post due to his acquaintance with recent advances in science, and his skill in a classical severity of demonstration, acquired by a thorough study of the works of the Greek geometers. Several years before this appointment he had made a name for himself with an elegant solution of the problem of finding the Sun's equator and determining the period of its rotation by observation of the spots on its surface.
Notwithstanding the arduous duties of his professorship, he found time for investigation in all the fields of physical science, and he published a very large number of dissertations, some of them of considerable length. Among the subjects were the transit of Mercury, the Aurora Borealis (corona), the figure of the Earth, the observation of the fixed stars, the inequalities in terrestrial gravitation, the application of mathematics to the theory of the telescope, the limits of certainty in astronomical observations, the solid of greatest attraction, the cycloid, the logistic curve, the theory of comets, the tides, the law of continuity, the double refraction micrometer, various problems of spherical trigonometry.In 1742 he was consulted, with other men of science, by the Pope Benedict XIV, as to the best means of securing the stability of the dome of St. Peter's, Rome, in which a crack had been discovered. His suggestion of placing five concentric iron bands was adopted. One of Boscovich's numerous publications One of Boscovich's numerous publicationsIn 1745 Boscovich published De Viribus Vivis in which he tried to find a middle way between Isaac Newton's gravitational theory and Gottfried Leibniz's metaphysical theory of monad-points. Developing a concept of "impenetrability" as a property of hard bodies which explained their behaviour in terms of force rather than matter. Stripping atoms of their matter, impenetratbility is disassociated from hardness and then put in an arbitrary relationship to elasticity. Impenetrability has a Cartesian sense that more than one point cannot occupy the same location at once.[4]Boscovich visited his hometown only once in 1747. After that, he never went to visit the place where he was born and grew up.He agreed to take part in the Portuguese expedition for the survey Brazil and the measurement of a degree of the meridian, but was persuaded by the Pope to stay in Italy and to undertake a similar task there with Christopher Maire, an English Jesuit who measured an arc of two degrees between Rome and Rimini. The operation began at the end of 1750, and was completed in about two years. An account was published in 1755, under the name De Litteraria expeditione per pontificiam ditionem ad dimetiendos duos meridiani gradus a PP. Maire et Boscovicli. The value of this work was increased by a carefully prepared map of the States of the Church. A French translation appeared in 1770.A dispute arose between Francis the Grand Duke of Tuscany and the republic of Lucca with respect to the drainage of a lake. As agent of Lucca, Boscovich was sent, in 1757, to Vienna and succeeded in bringing about a satisfactory arrangement in the matter.In Vienna in 1758, he published his famous work, Theoria philosophiae naturalis redacta ad unicam legem virium in natura existentium (Theory of Natural philosophy derived to the single Law of forces, which exist in Nature), containing his atomic theory and his theory of forces. A second edition was published in 1763 in Venice, a third in 1922 in London, and a fourth in 1966 in the United States. A fifth edition was published in Zagreb in 1974.Another occasion to exercise his diplomatic ability soon arose. The British government suspected that warships had been outfitted in the port of Dubrovnik for the service of France and that therefore the neutrality of Dubrovnik had been violated. Boscovich was selected to undertake an ambassadorship to London (1760), to vindicate the character of his native place and satisfy the government. This mission he discharged successfully — a credit to him and a delight to his countrymen. During his stay in England he was elected a fellow of the Royal Society.In 1761 astronomers were preparing to observe the transit of Venus across the Sun. Under the influence of the Royal Society Boscovich decided to travel to Istanbul. He arrived late and then travelled to Poland via Bulgaria and Moldavia then proceeding to Saint Petersburg where he was elected as a member of Russian Academy of Sciences. Ill health compelled him soon to return to Italy.