BIZIO, BARTOLOMEO. — Chemist, born in Vicenza on 30 October 1791, died in Venice in 1862; regarded among the greatest scientists of his time by Fr. Secchi in the preface to his book on the Unity of Physical Forces, and remembered abroad as a precursor of the most modern views of science.
His studies On the Purple of the Ancients are memorable; so too are his discovery of copper in various molluscs; his explanation of the phenomenon of purple polenta, which made him a precursor of microbiology; and the numerous series of investigations in biological chemistry and studies in physical chemistry collected in his work Dinamica chimica, where he studied the surface tension of liquids and anticipated his contemporaries in the study of chemical affinities, catalysis, pseudo-solutions, and repulsive trembling in the surface molecules of bodies.
This «noble vieillard», as one of his eulogists at the Institut de France called him in 1860, was also a good writer and a student of Italian literature, praised by Fr. Cesari; a member of the «Società Ital. delle Scienze», known as the Quaranta, and of the Italian Institute of Sciences; he lived for science and for his family. «Faithful to the most holy religion of his ancestors, he followed both its practices and its precepts punctiliously and therefore, with the true resignation of a Christian, endured those trials of body and spirit with which Providence was pleased to visit him throughout his life here below»: thus testified Dr. Pazienti in the eulogy read at the meeting of 28 December 1862 at the Venetian Institute of Sciences and Letters. The bibliography of his writings lists 109 memoirs and communications to various Italian and foreign scientific periodicals and numerous academies.