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Roger Joseph Boscovich | |
|---|---|
 Portrait byRobert Edge Pine, London, 1760 | |
| Born | Ruđer Josip Bošković (1711-05-18)18 May 1711 |
| Died | 13 February 1787(1787-02-13) (aged 75) |
| Citizenship | Republic of Ragusa |
| Alma mater | Collegio Romano[1] |
| Known for | Precursor of theatomic theory Founder ofBrera Observatory |
| Awards | ForMemRS (1761) |
| Scientific career | |
| Fields | Theology,physics,astronomy,mathematics,natural philosophy, diplomacy, poetry |
| Institutions | Brera Observatory University of Pavia |
Roger Joseph BoscovichSJ (Croatian:Ruđer Josip Bošković,pronounced[rûd͡ʑerjǒsipbôʃkoʋit͡ɕ];Italian:Ruggiero Giuseppe Boscovich;[2]Latin:Rogerius (Iosephus) Boscovicius;[3] 18 May 1711 – 13 February 1787) was aphysicist,astronomer,mathematician,philosopher,diplomat,poet,theologian,Jesuitpriest, and apolymath from theRepublic of Ragusa.[4] He studied and lived in Italy and France where he also published many of his works.[5]
Boscovich produced a precursor ofatomic theory and made many contributions toastronomy, including the first geometric procedure for determining theequator of a rotatingplanet from threeobservations of a surface feature and for computing theorbit of a planet from three observations of its position. In 1753 he also discovered the absence of an atmosphere on theMoon.[6]
Boscovich was born on 18 May 1711 inDubrovnik,Republic of Ragusa, to Paola Bettera (1674–1777), daughter of a local nobleman ofItalian origin, andNikola Bošković, a Ragusan merchant. Biographical sources offer conflicting information about Bošković’s father, who is alternately reported asCroat orSerb.[7] He was baptised on 26 May 1711 by Marinus Carolis,curatus et sacristia. The name Ruđer/Ruggiero may have been given to him because both his maternal great-grandfather, Agostino Bettera, and his mother's brother were called Ruggiero; his godfather was his uncle, Ruggiero Bettera. He was the seventh child of the family and the second youngest. His father was born in the village ofOrahov Do nearRavno, at the time part of theOttoman Empire (nowBosnia and Herzegovina).[8][9]
His uncle, Don Ilija Bošković, was killed byUskok bandits while celebrating Mass in 1692.[10] While his father, Nikola, had once been a prolific trader who traveled through the Ottoman Empire, Ruđer only knew him as a bedridden invalid; he died when his son was 10 years old. Boscovich's mother Paola, nicknamed "Pavica", was a member of a cultivated Italian merchant family established in Dubrovnik in the early 17th century, when her ancestor, Pietro Bettera, settled fromBergamo in northern Italy. She was described as a robust and active woman with a happy temperament who lived to 103.[5]
Paola Bettera Bošković left nothing in writing but her sister wrote poetry in Italian. Ruđer's cousins and playmates, Antun Bošković and Franjo Bošković, grew up into good Latinists. His brothers and sisters were all older than himself, except his sisterAnica Bošković (1714–1804), two years his junior. His eldest sister, Mare Bošković, nineteen years his senior, was the only member of the family to marry. His second sister, Marija Bošković, became a nun in the Ragusa Convent of St Catherine. His eldest brother, Božo Bošković (Boško, calledNatale by Roger in private correspondence[11]), thirteen years older, joined the service of the Ragusa Republic. Another brother, Bartolomej Bošković, born in 1700 and educated at theJesuit school in Dubrovnik, left home when Ruđer was 3 to become a scholar and a Jesuit priest in Rome. He also wrote verse in both Latin and "Illyrian" (the Renaissance era name for Serbo-Croatian), but eventually burnt some of his manuscripts out of a scrupulous modesty. Another brother, Ivan (Đivo) Bošković, became a Dominican in a sixteenth-century monastery in Dubrovnik, whose church Ruđer knew as a child with its rich treasures and paintings by Titian and Vasari, still there today. Another brother, Petar (Pero) Bošković, six years his senior, became a poet like his grandfather. He was schooled by the Jesuits, then served as an official of the Republic and made his reputation as a translator of Ovid, Corneille's Cid, and of Molière. A volume of his religious verse,Hvale Duhovne, was published in Venice in 1729.
At the age of 8 or 9, after acquiring the rudiments of reading and writing from Father Nicola Nicchei of the Church of St Nicholas, Ruđer was sent for schooling to the localJesuitCollegium Ragusinum. During his early studies, Boscovich showed a distinct propensity for further intellectual development. He gained a reputation at school for having an easy memory and a quick, deep mind.
On 16 September 1725, Ruđer Bošković left Dubrovnik for Rome. He was in the care of two Jesuit priests who took him to theSociety of Jesus, famous for its education of youth and at that time having some 800 establishments and 200,000 pupils under its care throughout the world. We learn nothing from Bošković himself until the time he entered the novitiate in 1731, but it was the usual practice for novices to spend the first two years not in theCollegium Romanum but inSant'Andrea delle Fratte. There, he studiedmathematics andphysics; and so quick was his progress in these sciences that in 1740 he was appointed professor of mathematics in the college.[8]
He was especially appropriate for this post due to his acquaintance with recent advances in science, and his skill in a classical severity of demonstration, acquired by a thorough study of the works of the Greek geometers. Several years before this appointment he had made a name for himself with a solution of the problem of finding theSun's equator and determining the period of its rotation by observation of the spots on its surface.
Notwithstanding the arduous duties of his professorship, he found time for investigation in various fields of physical science, and he published a very large number of dissertations, some of them of considerable length. Among the subjects were thetransit of Mercury, theAurora Borealis, thefigure of the Earth, the observation of thefixed stars, the inequalities in terrestrialgravitation, the application ofmathematics to the theory of thetelescope, the limits of certainty in astronomical observations, the solid of greatest attraction, thecycloid, thelogistic curve, the theory ofcomets, thetides, the law ofcontinuity, thedouble refractionmicrometer, and various problems ofspherical trigonometry.[citation needed]
In 1742, he was consulted, with other men of science, byPope Benedict XIV, as to the best means of securing the stability of the dome ofSt. Peter's, Rome, in which a crack had been discovered. His suggestion of placing five concentric iron bands was adopted.
In 1744, he was ordained to the Roman Catholicpriesthood.[12]
In 1745, Bošković publishedDe Viribus Vivis in which he tried to find a middle way betweenIsaac Newton's gravitational theory andGottfried Leibniz'smetaphysical theory ofmonad-points. He developed a concept of "impenetrability" as a property of hard bodies which explained their behaviour in terms offorce rather thanmatter. Stripping atoms of their matter, impenetrability is disassociated from hardness and then put in an arbitrary relationship toelasticity. Impenetrability has aCartesian sense that more than one point cannot occupy the same location at once.[13]
Bošković visited his hometown only once, in 1747, never to return. He agreed to take part in the Portuguese expedition for the survey ofBrazil and thearc measurement of a degree oflatitude (meridian arc), but was persuaded by the Pope to stay in Italy and to undertake a similar task there withChristopher Maire, an EnglishJesuit who measured an arc of two degrees between Rome andRimini. The operation began at the end of 1750, and was completed in about two years. An account was published in 1755, under the nameDe Litteraria expeditione per pontificiam ditionem ad dimetiendos duos meridiani gradus a PP. Maire et Boscovicli. The value of this work was increased by a carefully prepared map of theStates of the Church. A French translation appeared in 1770 which incorporated, as an appendix, some material first published in 1760 outlining an objective procedure for determining suitable values for the parameters of the fitted model from a greater number of observations. An unconstrained variant of this fitting procedure is now known as the L1-norm orLeast absolute deviations procedure and serves as a robust alternative to the familiar L2-norm or Least Squares procedure.
A dispute arose betweenFrancis theGrand Duke of Tuscany and theRepublic of Lucca with respect to the drainage of a lake. As an agent of Lucca, Bošković was sent, in 1757, toVienna and succeeded in bringing about a satisfactory arrangement in the matter. Here he metKarl Scherffer who became an influential promoter of the ideas of Bošković in Austria.[14]
InVienna in 1758, he published the first edition of his famous work,Philosophiæ naturalis theoria redacta ad unicam legem virium in natura existentium (Theory of Natural philosophy derived to the single Law of forces which exist in Nature), containing hisatomic theory and his theory offorces.[15]
A second edition was published in 1763 inVenice and a third again in Vienna in 1764. In 1922, it was published in London, and in 1966, in the United States. Another edition was published inZagreb in 1974.
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Another occasion to exercise his diplomatic ability soon arose. TheBritish government suspected thatwarships had been fitted out in Dubrovnik for the service ofFrance, and that therefore theneutrality of the republic had been violated. Bošković was selected to undertake anambassadorship toLondon in 1760, to convince the British that nothing of the sort had occurred and provide proof of Ragusa's neutrality. This mission proved to be a complete success – a credit to him and a delight to his countrymen. During his stay inEngland, he was elected as afellow of the Royal Society.
In 1761, astronomers were preparing to observe thetransit of Venus across the Sun. Under the influence of the Royal Society, Bošković decided to travel toConstantinople. He arrived late and then travelled toPoland viaBulgaria andMoldavia then proceeding toSaint Petersburg where he was elected as a member ofRussian Academy of Sciences. Ill health compelled him soon to return to Italy.
Bošković visitedLaibach, the capital ofCarniola (nowLjubljana, Slovenia), at least in 1757, 1758, and 1763, and made contact with the Jesuits and the Franciscan friars in the town. The Jesuits incorporated his teachings into their lectures at theLaibach Jesuit College. His physics became the foundation of physical lectures as well in other parts of theHabsburg monarchy, and influenced the thought of, among others,Gabriel Gruber andJurij Vega, prominent physicists of the period. Both Vega and the Rationalist philosopherFranz Samuel Karpe educated their students in Vienna about the ideas of Bošković and in the spirit of his thought.[16]
In 1764, he was called to serve as the chair of mathematics at theUniversity of Pavia, and for six years he held this post with the directorship of theobservatory ofBrera in Milan, That is whereCharles Burney met him; since Burney's Italian was not very good at that time, Boscovich obliged him speaking French.
He was invited by theRoyal Society of London to undertake an expedition to California to observe thetransit of Venus in 1769 again, but this was prevented by the recent decree of the Spanish government expelling Jesuits from itsdominions. Bošković had many enemies and he was driven to frequent changes of residence. About 1777, he returned to Milan, where he continued to teach and direct the Brera observatory.
Deprived of his post by the intrigues of his associates, he was about to retire to Dubrovnik when in 1773, the news of the suppression of his order in Italy reached him. Uncertainty led him to accept an invitation from the King of France to come to Paris where he was appointed director ofoptics for the navy, with a pension of 8,000livres and a position was created for him. In France, Boscovich was elected a member of the Academy of Sciences in Paris, Metz and Marseille.[17] He naturalised in France and stayed for ten years, but his position became irksome, and at length intolerable. He, however, continued to work in the pursuit of scientific knowledge and published many remarkable works. Among them was an elegant solution to the problem of determining theorbit of acomet from three observations, and works onmicrometer andachromatic telescopes.
In 1782, Bošković was one of the founders of theAccademia nazionale delle scienze detta dei XL (National Association of the Sciences), with the name of "Società Italiana" (Italian Association): this learned society gathered forty members representing the most important Italian scientists of the period.[18]
In 1783, he returned to Italy and spent two years atBassano, occupying himself with the publication of hisOpera pertinentia ad opticam et astronomiam, etc., published in 1785 in five volumes quarto.
After a visit of some months to the convent ofVallombrosa, he went to Brera in 1786 and resumed his work. At that time his health was failing, his reputation was on the wane, his works did not sell, and he gradually fell prey to illness and disappointment. He died in Milan and was buried in the church of St. Maria Podone.
In philosophy and physics,Laplace's demon is athought experiment supporting the concept ofdeterminism. It suggests that if someone (theDemon) knew the precise location and momentum of every particle in the universe, he could in principle calculate the history and future of every particle.
While Laplace's version of determinism is based on general terms, Boscovich's uses physical terms, like position,velocity, direction andcentre of mass. Boscovich also (correctly) suggests that the continuity offorce is a necessary assumption for determinism, and he presented it in strict mathematical form. In short, Boskovich's determinism is more physical, while Laplace's determinism is more metaphysical, placing it in harmony withLeibniz's metaphysics.[19]
Knowing with complete accuracy both the location and velocity of a particle violates theuncertainty principle of modernquantum mechanics, so this is no longer considered physically possible.
In addition to the works already mentioned Bošković published course material he had prepared for his pupils in mathematics.[20][21] He also published accounts of his travels fromConstantinople toPoland,[22] in several expanded editions[23] and translated into French.[24]
Bošković applied himself to practical engineering projects, including several discussions of architectural repair or stability, including repairs to St Peter's Dome,[25][26] the stability of the Duomo of Milan,[27] repairs to the library of Cesarea di Vienna,[28] and a report on the damage to sectors of Rome in June 1749 due to a whirlwind.[29]
Bošković was also consulted on civil works concerning ports and rivers: Ivica Martinovic[30] has shown the extent to which Bošković applied himself to such works, and lists 13 major works:
Martinovic's paper[30] includes an extensive annotated bibliography on such works.
Bošković was a Roman Catholic priest, and in expressing his religious views was straightforward. In his most famous bookA Theory of Natural Philosophy (1758) he says: "Regarding the nature of the Divine Creator, my theory is extraordinarily illuminating, and the result from it is a necessity to recognize Him. ... Therefore vain dreams of those who believe that the world was created by accident, or that it could be built as a fatal necessity, or that it was there for eternity lining itself along his own necessary laws are completely eliminated."[31]
Bošković also composed poetry with many religious and astronomical allusions. In hisMarian devotion, he wrotehexameter verses on theVirgin Mary.[32]
In the samedome of St. Peter in Rome, whose cupola he saved from ruin, he worked as a confessor administering theSacrament of Penance or Reconciliation.
In 1873, Nietzsche wrote a fragment called 'Time Atom Theory', which was a reworking of Boscovich'sTheoria Philosophiae Naturalis redacta ad unicam legem virium in natura existentium. In general, Boscovich's ideas were a large influence on Nietzsche's ideas of force and the will to power.[33][34]
In the 1930s,Werner Heisenberg nicknamed Boscovichthe Croatian Leibniz.[35] In 1935, a lunar crater – theBoscovich crater – was named after him for his contributions to astronomy. The largest Croatian institute of natural sciences and technology, based inZagreb, is called "Ruđer Bošković Institute" since 1950. The oldest astronomical society in the Balkans based inSerbia's capitalBelgrade is calledAstronomical Society Ruđer Bošković since 1953.
ChemistHarold Hartley called Boscovich "one of the great intellectual figures of all ages", and he has further been regarded as "the greatest genius Yugoslavia has ever produced".[36]
In 1987, on the occasion of the 200th anniversary of Boscovich death, the Yugoslav state Post based inBelgrade made a postage stamp and postcard on which is written that Boskovich was "the greatest Croatian scientist of his time".[37][38]
In 2023,Dubrovnik Ruđer Bošković Airport was renamed in Boscovich's honour,[39] while the government of nearbyTrebinje wanted to do the same for their prospective airport.[40]
Themodern concept of nationality, based onethnic concepts such as language, culture, religion, custom, etc., was developed only in the 19th century. For this reason the attribution of a definite "nationality" to personalities of the previous centuries, living in ethnically mixed regions, is often indeterminable; Bošković's legacy is consequently celebrated in Croatia, Italy and Serbia.[8] His ethnicity is also part of theSerb-Croat distinctions in self-identification of theWesternSouth Slavic enlighteners, that was one of the major problems in 20th centuryYugoslavia.[41]
A number of sources state that he referred to his Croatian identity.[42] In writings to his sister Anica (Anna), he told her he had not forgotten theCroatian language.[42] In a letter to his brother from 1757, he describes the encounter with Croatian soldiers inVienna and remarks at the end of the letter: "Eviva Haddick e i nostri Croati!" ("Long life toHadik and to our Croats!").[43] While living inParis and attending to a military parade where he saw aCroatian unit from Ragusa, his words were: "there are my brave Croats".[44]
Italian sources claim that Boscovich was remembered as an Italian. According to Italian sources, he was born in a city with mixed cultures, Croatian and Italian, and the higher social strata of Dubrovnik were under Italian influence (Roman-Dalmatian influence). His mother's family came from Italy, and his life and career had strong Italian influences. He moved to Italy at age 14, where he spent most of his life. In some encyclopedias, he is described as an Italian scientist. He used the Italian language in private, including in correspondence with his brother Baro,[45] andVoltaire wrote to Boscovich in Italian "as a sign of respect". Boscovich himself was proud of hisDalmatian identity. Whend'Alembert in hisOpuscule mathématiques… called him "an Italian mathematician",[46] he shot back that he was "a Dalmatian from Dubrovnik, and not an Italian".[44] However, he added that he had been living in Italy for a long time since his first youth, so "he can in some way be called Italian".[47][48]
TheSerbian Academy of Sciences and Arts ranks him amongthe 100 most prominent Serbs,[49][50] According to one source, branches of the brotherhood are said to have settled the surroundings ofStolac.[51] A number of sources claim that Boscovich is a Serbian scientist or state that he is of Serbian paternal origin.[52]
Boscovich published eight scientific dissertations prior to his 1744 ordination as a priest and appointment as a professor and another 14 afterwards. The following is a partial list of his publications:[53]
Neki srpski autori priznaju da je Bošković Hrvat. Tako je povodom 200-te obljetnice Boškovićeve smrti (1987) "Jugomarka" iz Beograda izdala poštansku markicu i razglednicu na poleđini koje izričito piše da je Bošković "najveći hrvatski naučnik svoga vremena"
Nous observerons ici en premier lieu que norre Auteur est Dalmate et de Raguse, non-Italien... vu le long séjour qu'il a fait en Italie depuis sa premiere jeunesse, on peut in quelque sorte le dire Italien
…огранака братства Бошковића у Орахов До и околицу Стоца, што је утврђено, као што смо видјели, на основу тамошњег предања и других извора.
This article incorporates text from a publication now in thepublic domain: Chisholm, Hugh, ed. (1911). "Boscovich, Roger Joseph".Encyclopædia Britannica (11th ed.). Cambridge University Press.
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