BELGRADO, GIACOMO. - Jesuit and scientist, born at Udine on 16 Nov. 1704, he entered the novitiate on 16 Oct. 1724; he first taught literature at Venice and then, after his priestly ordination, science at Parma, where he had an astronomical observatory installed in one of the college towers. From 1750 to 1763 he was in the service of the court. The suppression of the Society of Jesus in 1773 found him rector of the college of S. Lucia in Bologna. He died in his native city on 26 March 1789.
A member of numerous academies, he published in Latin several dissertations on physics and physiology, observations of eclipses, etc. (v. the list in Sommervogel or in Riccardi’s Biblioteca matematica italiana). More important are the Theoria eschieae Archinensis (Parma 1767), and above all the two-part memoir: De analysea vulgaris usu in re physica. De analysea infinitorum usu in re physica (2 vols., ibid. 1761-62), which gained him appointment as a corresponding member of the Academy of Sciences of Paris. He directed the publication of a series: Nuova raccolta di autori che trattano del moto dell'acqua (7 vols., Parma 1766-68, reprinted at Bologna 1823-45). In his final years he dealt with apologetic and religious subjects, such as: Dell'esistenza di Dio da' teoremi geometrici demonstrata (Udine 1777) and Ragionamenti sacri sulle tre prigioni di s. Giov. Battista, s. Pietro e s. Paolo (ibid. 1824).