BELGRADO, GIACOMO. - Jesuit and scientist, b. in Udine on 16 Nov. 1704, entered the novitiate on 16 Oct. 1724; he first taught letters in Venice, then, after his priestly ordination, sciences in Parma, where he had an astronomical observatory installed in one of the towers of the college. 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. D. 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. (see the list in Sommervogel or in Riccardi's Biblioteca matematica italiana). More important are the Theoria eschieae Archinensis (Parma 1767), and principally the twofold memoir: De analysea vulgaris usu in re physica. De analysea infinitorum usu in re physica (2 vols., ibid. 1761-62), which earned 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 in Bologna 1823-45). In his last 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).