BARSANTI, EUGENIO. — Scolopian physicist and mathematician, born at Pietrasanta on 12 October 1821, died at Seraing (Belgium) on 18 April 1864. He taught physics and mathematics at Volterra from 1843 onward. Repeating before his pupils Volta’s pistol experiment, he thought that the force developed by the explosion of a mixture of hydrogen and air could be applied as motive power in a mechanism resembling steam engines. In 1849 he was called to Florence to teach mathematics, and shortly afterward was appointed lecturer in mechanics and hydraulics at the Ximenian Observatory. Having come to Florence, B. did not take long to present his ideas, conceived at Volterra, to Fr. Antonelli, who had now become his colleague in teaching; it was he who invited Felice Matteucci, a profound student of mechanics, to collaborate with B. in constructing the first gas engine. Toward the end of 1851, the two scholars began together a long and painstaking series of experiments, and, as their preparatory studies had by then reached an advanced stage, they considered it advisable to write a Memoir and deposit it sealed with a scientific academy, in order to assert the priority of their discovery should anyone else study the same subject.
The academy chosen was that of the Georgofili in Florence, to which they delivered the Memoir in June 1853. At the request of the two members, the packet was opened ten years later, precisely on 20 September 1863, and the Memoir was read and then printed in the proceedings of the academy itself. B.’s name is therefore linked to the invention of the Barsanti–Matteucci internal-combustion engine, which to this day operates in industry under the usurped name of Otto–Langen. In a lecture given in Florence in 1931, Fr. Guido Alfani claimed the invention for B.