BANCALARI, MICHELE ALBERTO

MICHELE ALBERTO BANCALARI. — Italian physicist of the Piarist Order, born in Chiavari on 20 Feb. 1805, died in Genoa on 10 Aug. 1864. He taught physics and mathematics in various colleges in Liguria, but especially in Chiavari, from where in 1846 he moved to Genoa, having been appointed to the chair of experimental physics. He became known among Italian and foreign scientists above all for his discovery of the diamagnetism of gases, which he personally communicated to the Congress of Scientists in Venice in 1847. The English journal *Philosophical Magazine*, 31 (1847), was the first to publish, and in definitive form, Bancalari’s discovery, and three years later the illustrious physicist Faraday acknowledged his priority in a memoir published in the *Philosophical Transactions*. Bancalari also published three important memoirs on the molecular forces of bodies.