Adolfo Bartoli

Adolfo Bartoli (1851 to 1896) was an Italian physicist, born in Florence, who is best known for introducing the concept of radiation pressure from thermodynamical considerations. He studied physics and mathematics at the University of Pisa until 1874 and then held physics posts at the Technical Institute of Arezzo, the University of Sassari, the Technical Institute of Florence and the University of Catania, before moving to the University of Pavia in 1893. In 1876 he derived the existence of radiation pressure from thermodynamics, a result that influenced Boltzmann. Because his argument did not depend on any theory of what light is, radiation pressure was also called Maxwell-Bartoli pressure, since Maxwell had predicted the same pressure directly from his electromagnetic theory. Bartoli died in Pavia in 1896.