J.C. Maxwell´s Forerunners: Riccardo Felici [Historical Corner]

Riccardo Felici (Figure 1) was born on June 11, 1819, in Parma. Parma was then the capital city of the eponymous duchy governed by Maria Luigia, wife of Napoleon and daughter of the Emperor of Austria, Francis II. Felici studied at the University of Pisa, where he received his degree on July 12, 1843. In 1846, he was nominated assistant to Carlo Matteucci [Forlì, Italy, June 21, 1811 - Leghorn, Italy, July 25, 1868] (Figure 2). Matteucci was the founder of Il Cimento (The Endeavor), a journal of physics, chemistry, and natural history (1844), and later founder of Il Nuovo Cimento (The New Endeavor) (1855), which is still a major physics journal in Italy. Matteucci was a pioneer in electrochemistry and electrophysiology, discovering the presence of electrical phenomena in muscle contraction, and independently from Faraday formulating the laws of electrolysis.