Luigi Palmieri

Luigi Palmieri (1807 to 1896) was an Italian physicist and meteorologist, born in Faicchio in the province of Benevento, who died in Naples at the age of 89. He received a degree in physics from the University of Naples, became professor of physics at the Royal Naval School in Naples in 1845 and was appointed to the chair of physics at the university in 1847. From 1848 he worked at the Vesuvius Observatory, of which he became director in 1854. He was famous for his studies of the eruptions of Mount Vesuvius, for research on earthquakes and meteorological phenomena and for improving the seismograph of his time: with an electromagnetic seismometer he detected very slight ground tremors in the hope of predicting eruptions, and he was the first to detect helium on Earth, in Vesuvius lava. With a modified Peltier electrometer he studied atmospheric electricity, and he modified the Morse telegraph and improved the anemometer and pluviometer. He joined the Royal Society of Naples in 1861, the Lincei in 1871 and the American Philosophical Society in 1873.