GIAMBATTISTA PIANCIANI. — Physicist and philosopher, born at Spoleto on 17 Oct. 1784, died at Rome on 23 March 1862. Jesuit from 2 June 1805, from 1824 professor of physical chemistry at the Collegio Romano, he distinguished himself especially in the field of electricity and magnetism. Having gone abroad because of the revolutionary movements of 1848, he was professor of dogmatics at Georgetown College in Washington in the years 1849–50. Returning in 1851, he became an assiduous collaborator of the newly founded *Civiltà Cattolica*.
Though a discoverer of particulars, his mind was more inclined toward synthesis, with a wealth of erudition open to progress. The principal study of his entire life was a concordist commentary on the Mosaic account of creation, opposing the vogue of biblical rationalism and especially the “mythicism” of D. Strauss, an undertaking then of great merit. Although he sought “to show the harmony of revelation and tradition with science” (A. Secchi), explaining the phases of creation “with the guidance of Scripture and natural philosophy,” today every concordism (v.) has been abandoned.
Principal works: *Istituzioni fisico-chimiche* (4 vols., Rome 1833–34); *Elementi di fisico-chimica* (2 vols., Naples 1840–41); *Saggi filosofici* (Rome 1855); *Nuovi saggi filosofici* (ibid. 1856). His greatest work is *In historiam creationis Mosaicum commentarius* (Naples 1851, reprinted by A. Crampon in *Commentaria in Scripturam Sacram… Cornelii a Lapide*, I, Paris 1861, pp. 54–135). *La Cosmogonia naturale comparata col Genesi* is a reprint of articles from *Civiltà Cattolica* published in the years 1858–62.