BOSCOVICH, ROGER JOSEPH. - Born on May 18, 1711, in Ragusa: after completing his studies at the Jesuit college of that city, he entered the novitiate of the Society in Rome on Oct. 31, 1725.
He studied philosophy and mathematics at the Collegio Romano, and as soon as he had finished the course in theology he succeeded his teacher Father Borgondi in the chair of mathematics. By then most renowned for his numerous publications of a physical and astronomical nature, his opinion was sought on every important problem, whether for monuments to be erected and buildings to be repaired (as when dangerous cracks were discovered in the dome of St. Peter's), or for problems of hydraulics in various ports of the Papal State, of the regulation of rivers, of the restoration of the aqueduct in Perugia, of the drainage of the waters of Lake Bientina, etc. In 1750, on the proposal of Cardinal Secretary Gonzaga, together with Father Chr. Maire, he began the geodetic works to measure two degrees of meridian between Rome and Rimini, and to correct the map of the Papal State. In two and a half years the work was brought to completion, and the map was published in Rome in 1755 in the work De Litteraria Expeditione per pontificiam
Ditionem..., a work which by itself alone would suffice to give the author imperishable fame.
In 1763, at the invitation of the Senate of Milan, he accepted a chair in Pavia. At the request of Father Rector Pallavicino he drew up the plan of a new observatory to be erected in the college of Brera in Milan. Begun in 1764 and carried on under the constant supervision of B., the construction was finished by the summer of 1765, earning the praise of all the experts. Moreover the observatory was furnished, thanks to him, with a series of excellent instruments, which were rectified and examined by B. with highly original methods. Famous are the investigations that he had proposed to carry out concerning the aberration of the fixed stars, using a sector with two telescopes, one ordinary and the other to be filled with water, a project which he was not given the means to carry out for lack of financial resources, and which was realized a century later by Airy at Greenwich. Unfortunately, because of a disagreement between him and the director Father Lagrange, B. in the year 1772 was dismissed from the observatory; having at the same time renounced the chair of optics and astronomy, founded expressly for him, he left Milan. After the suppression of the Society of Jesus in 1773 he went to Paris, where he was appointed director of optics in the service of the French navy. In 1782 he returned to Italy, and in 1785 he returned to his beloved observatory. He died in Milan on Feb. 13, 1787.
The list of B.'s works fills fully twenty folio columns of the well-known bibliography of the Society of Jesus by Sommervogel (I, cols. 1828-50). Of the larger works let us note further: Elementorum universae matheseos tomi 3, (Rome 1752-58); De solis ac lunae defectibus libri 5 (London 1760), a poem of 5,430 hexameters on solar and lunar eclipses, dedicated to the Royal Society of London; Opera pertinentia ad opticum et astronomiam (Bassano 1785) in 5 vols. Special mention deserves his work: De orbitis cometarum determinandis ope trium observationum (Paris 1774), which for such research earned him the very honorable place of third, after Newton and Euler.
But the work of which he was principally proud was his Theoria Philosophiae Naturalis (Venice 1763), according to which matter would be composed of simple and indivisible elements, subject to the force of attraction and repulsion. If there are not many who have embraced that dynamism in its entirety, it will remain true that B., with his original ideas and with the problems he posed, gave a notable impulse to the progress of science.
A universal genius, B. was a distinguished astronomer, physicist, mathematician, architect, historian, poet, philosopher, diplomat. And while, in order to discharge very important assignments, he undertook numerous journeys to almost all the European capitals, he always remained most faithful to the bonds of his priestly habit and with the exemplariness of his life honored the Order that had educated him.
Bibliography3 works
Giovanni Stein