BECCARI, JACOPO BARTOLOMEO. - Born in Bologna in 1692, died in 1766. A chemist and physiologist, he taught chemistry at the University of Bologna: he was the first professor of that subject in Italy. Of great importance are his studies on the so-called "phosphors" (the shining stone of Bologna, or calcium sulfide), on phosphorescence, and on the blackening of silver chloride by the action of light, the starting point of photography; for these studies Edmond Becquerel cites him in the work La luce, le sue cause ed i suoi effetti (Paris 1868). He discovered the gluten of wheat flour; he dealt with the structure of flames, the analysis of mineral waters, and other topics of chemistry. "We must bow before this name," writes Francesco Selmi, "since it may be said that with him chemistry began to cast some flashes of living light." It is curious to note the occasion that led him to concern himself, as a physiologist, with fasting and with problems of the metabolism of the human organism. "Cardinal Lambertini, who later became Pope Benedict XIV, while composing a work on the beatification and canonization of those who died in the opinion of sanctity, wished to know whether abstaining for a long time from every kind of food and drink without dying of it was a natural phenomenon or a miraculous one" (F. Selmi), and B., with his experimental research, provided an answer which for those times, when the energy value of foodstuffs was not yet known, was very prudent and at the same time exhaustive.
BIBL.: sources