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Alessandro Giuseppe Antonio Anastasio Volta (18 February 1745 – 5 March 1827) was an Italian physicist, chemist, and a pioneer of electricity and power,〔Giuliano Pancaldi, ''"Volta: Science and culture in the age of enlightenment"'', Princeton University Press, 2003.〕〔Alberto Gigli Berzolari, ''"Volta's Teaching in Como and Pavia"'' - Nuova voltiana〕〔(Hall of Fame ), Edison.〕 who is credited as the inventor of the electrical battery and the discoverer of methane. He invented the Voltaic pile in 1799 and the results of which he reported in 1800 in a two-part letter to the President of the Royal Society. With this invention Volta proved that electricity could be generated chemically and debased the prevalent theory that electricity was generated solely by living beings. Volta's invention sparked a great amount of scientific excitement and led others to conduct similar experiments which eventually led to the development of the field of electrochemistry.〔 Alessandro Volta also drew admiration from Napoleon Bonaparte for his invention, and was invited to the Institute of France to demonstrate his invention to the members of the Institute. Volta enjoyed a certain amount of closeness with the Emperor throughout his life and he was conferred numerous honours by him.〔 Alessandro Volta held the chair of experimental physics at the University of Pavia for nearly 40 years and was widely idolised by his students.〔 Despite his professional success Volta tended to be a person inclined towards domestic life and this was more apparent in his later years. At this time he tended to live secluded from public life and more for the sake of his family until his eventual death in 1827 from a series of illnesses which began in 1823.〔 The SI unit of electric potential is named in his honour as the volt. ==Early life and works == Volta was born in Como, a town in present-day northern Italy (near the Swiss border) on 18 February 1745. In 1794, Volta married an aristocratic lady also from Como, Teresa Peregrini, with whom he raised three sons: Zanino, Flaminio, and Luigi. His own father Filippo Volta was of noble lineage. His mother Donna Maddalena came from the family of the Inzaghis. In 1774, he became a professor of physics at the Royal School in Como. A year later, he improved and popularised the electrophorus, a device that produced static electricity. His promotion of it was so extensive that he is often credited with its invention, even though a machine operating on the same principle was described in 1762 by the Swedish experimenter Johan Wilcke.〔, p.73〕〔Joh. Carl Wilcke (1762) "Ytterligare rön och försök om ''contraira electriciteterne'' vid laddningen och därtil hörande delar" (Additional findings and experiments on the opposing electric charges (are created ) during charging, and parts related thereto) ''Kongliga Svenska Vetenskaps Academiens Handlingar'' (Proceedings of the Royal Swedish Science Academy), vol. 23, pages (206-229 ), 245–266.〕 In 1777, he travelled through Switzerland. There he befriended H. B. de Saussure. In the years between 1776 and 1778, Volta studied the chemistry of gases. He researched and discovered methane after reading a paper by Benjamin Franklin of United States on "flammable air". In November 1776, he found methane at Lake Maggiore,〔Alessandro Volta, ''Lettere del Signor Don Alessandro Volta … Sull' Aria Inflammabile Nativa delle Paludi'' (of Signor Don Alessandro Volta … on the flammable native air of the marshes ) (Milan, (Italy): Giuseppe Marelli, 1777).〕 and by 1778 he managed to isolate methane.〔(【引用サイトリンク】title=Methane )〕 He devised experiments such as the ignition of methane by an electric spark in a closed vessel. Volta also studied what we now call electrical capacitance, developing separate means to study both electrical potential (''V'' ) and charge (''Q'' ), and discovering that for a given object, they are proportional. This is called Volta's Law of Capacitance, and it was for this work the unit of electrical potential has been named the volt.〔 In 1779 he became a professor of experimental physics at the University of Pavia, a chair that he occupied for almost 40 years. 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Alessandro Volta」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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