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Early life

Luigi Galvani was born to Domenico Galvani and Barbara Caterina Foschi, in Bologna, then part of the Papal States.⁶ The house in which he was born may still be seen on Via Marconi, 25, in the center of Bologna.⁷ Domenico was a goldsmith.⁸ His family had produced several illustrious men.⁹

Galvani then began taking an interest in the field of "medical electricity". This field emerged in the middle of the 18th century, following electrical researches and the discovery of the effects of electricity on the human body by scientists including Bertrand Bajon and Ramón María Termeyer in the 1760s,¹⁰ and by John Walsh¹¹¹² and Hugh Williamson in the 1770s.¹³¹⁴

Galvani vs. Volta

Further information: Galvanism

Alessandro Volta, a professor of experimental physics in the University of Pavia, was among the first scientists who repeated and checked Galvani’s experiments. At first, he embraced animal electricity. However, he started to doubt that the conductions were caused by specific electricity intrinsic to the animal's legs or other body parts. Volta believed that the contractions depended on the metal cable Galvani used to connect the nerves and muscles in his experiments.¹⁵

Every cell has a cell potential; biological electricity has the same chemical underpinnings as the current between electrochemical cells, and thus can be duplicated outside the body. Volta's intuition was correct. Volta, essentially, objected to Galvani’s conclusions about "animal electric fluid", but the two scientists disagreed respectfully and Volta coined the term "Galvanism" for a direct current of electricity produced by chemical action.¹⁶

Since Galvani was reluctant to intervene in the controversy with Volta, he trusted his nephew, Giovanni Aldini, to act as the main defender of the theory of animal electricity.¹⁷

Death

Galvani actively investigated animal electricity until the end of his life. The Cisalpine Republic, a French client state founded in 1797 after the French occupation of Northern Italy, required every university professor to swear loyalty to the new authority. Galvani, who disagreed with the social and political confusion, refused to swear loyalty, along with other colleagues. This led to the new authority depriving him of all his academic and public positions, which took every financial support away. Galvani died peacefully surrounded by his mother and father, in his brother’s house depressed and in poverty, on 4 December 1798.¹⁸

Legacy

Galvani's legacy includes:

• Galvani's report of his investigations were mentioned specifically by Mary Shelley as part of the summer reading list leading up to an ad hoc ghost story contest on a rainy day in Switzerland—and the resultant novel Frankenstein—and its reanimated construct. In Frankenstein, Victor studies the principles of galvanism but it is not mentioned in reference to the creation of the Monster.
• Galvani's name also survives in everyday language as the verb 'galvanize' as well as in more specialized terms: Galvani potential, galvanic anode, galvanic bath, galvanic cell, galvanic corrosion, galvanic couple, galvanic current, galvanic isolation, galvanic series, galvanic skin response, galvanism, galvanization, hot-dip galvanization, galvanometer, Galvalume, and psycho-galvanic reflex.

Galvani, according to William Fox, was "by nature courageous and religious." Jean-Louis-Marc Alibert said of Galvani that he never ended his lessons “without exhorting his hearers and leading them back to the idea of that eternal Providence, which develops, conserves, and circulates life among so many diverse beings.”¹⁹

Works

• De viribus electricitatis in motu musculari commentarius (in Latin), 1791. The Institute of Sciences, Bologna.
• De viribus electricitatis in motu musculari (in Latin). Modena: Società tipografica. 1792.
• Memorie sulla elettricità animale (in Italian). Bologna: Clemente Maria Sassi. 1797.
• [Opere] (in Italian). Bologna: Emidio Dall'Olmo. 1841.

See also

• History of electrochemistry

Sources

• Heilbron, John L., ed. (2003). The Oxford Companion to the History of Modern Science. Oxford University Press. ISBN 978-0199743766.

External links

• The dictionary definition of galvanize at Wiktionary
• Chisholm, Hugh, ed. (1911). "Galvani, Luigi" . Encyclopædia Britannica (11th ed.). Cambridge University Press.

References

1. "Galvani". The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language (5th ed.). HarperCollins. Retrieved 31 May 2019. https://www.ahdictionary.com/word/search.html?q=Galvani ↩

2. "Galvani". Collins English Dictionary. HarperCollins. Retrieved 31 May 2019. https://www.collinsdictionary.com/dictionary/english/galvani ↩

3. "Galvani, Luigi" (US) and "Galvani, Luigi". Lexico UK English Dictionary. Oxford University Press. Archived from the original on 2020-10-26. https://web.archive.org/web/20190531144301/https://en.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/us/Galvani,_Luigi ↩

4. "Galvani". Merriam-Webster.com Dictionary. Merriam-Webster. Retrieved 31 May 2019. https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/Galvani ↩

5. Whittaker, E. T. (1951), A History of the Theories of Aether and Electricity. Vol 1, Nelson, London /wiki/E._T._Whittaker ↩

6. Heilbron 2003, p. 323. - Heilbron, John L., ed. (2003). The Oxford Companion to the History of Modern Science. Oxford University Press. ISBN 978-0199743766. ↩

7. "Galvani and the Electrophysiology of Muscular Contraction". Circulation. 26: 11. 1962. ↩

8. Heilbron 2003, p. 323. - Heilbron, John L., ed. (2003). The Oxford Companion to the History of Modern Science. Oxford University Press. ISBN 978-0199743766. ↩

9. "Galvani and the Electrophysiology of Muscular Contraction". Circulation. 26: 11. 1962. ↩

10. de Asúa, Miguel (9 April 2008). "The Experiments of Ramón M. Termeyer SJ on the Electric Eel in the River Plate Region (c. 1760) and other Early Accounts of Electrophorus electricus". Journal of the History of the Neurosciences. 17 (2): 160–174. doi:10.1080/09647040601070325. PMID 18421634. /wiki/Doi_(identifier) ↩

11. Edwards, Paul (10 November 2021). "A Correction to the Record of Early Electrophysiology Research on the 250th Anniversary of a Historic Expedition to Île de Ré". HAL open-access archive. hal-03423498. Retrieved 6 May 2022. https://hal.archives-ouvertes.fr/hal-03423498/document ↩

12. Alexander, Mauro (1969). "The role of the voltaic pile in the Galvani-Volta controversy concerning animal vs. metallic electricity". Journal of the History of Medicine and Allied Sciences. XXIV (2): 140–150. doi:10.1093/jhmas/xxiv.2.140. PMID 4895861. /wiki/Journal_of_the_History_of_Medicine_and_Allied_Sciences ↩

13. VanderVeer, Joseph B. (6 July 2011). "Hugh Williamson: Physician, Patriot, and Founding Father". Journal of the American Medical Association. 306 (1). doi:10.1001/jama.2011.933. /wiki/Doi_(identifier) ↩

14. Bresadola, Marco (15 July 1998). "Medicine and science in the life of Luigi Galvani". Brain Research Bulletin. 46 (5): 367–380. doi:10.1016/s0361-9230(98)00023-9. PMID 9739000. S2CID 13035403. /wiki/Doi_(identifier) ↩

15. Bresadola, Marco (15 July 1998). "Medicine and science in the life of Luigi Galvani". Brain Research Bulletin. 46 (5): 367–380. doi:10.1016/s0361-9230(98)00023-9. PMID 9739000. S2CID 13035403. /wiki/Doi_(identifier) ↩

16. Luigi Galvani – IEEE Global History Network. http://www.ieeeghn.org/wiki/index.php/Luigi_Galvani ↩

17. Bresadola, Marco (15 July 1998). "Medicine and science in the life of Luigi Galvani". Brain Research Bulletin. 46 (5): 367–380. doi:10.1016/s0361-9230(98)00023-9. PMID 9739000. S2CID 13035403. /wiki/Doi_(identifier) ↩

18. Bresadola, Marco (15 July 1998). "Medicine and science in the life of Luigi Galvani". Brain Research Bulletin. 46 (5): 367–380. doi:10.1016/s0361-9230(98)00023-9. PMID 9739000. S2CID 13035403. /wiki/Doi_(identifier) ↩

19. "CATHOLIC ENCYCLOPEDIA: Luigi Galvani". Retrieved 1 September 2014. http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/06371c.htm ↩