Volta Prize Volta Prize The Volta Prize (French: prix Volta) was originally established by Napoleon III during the Second French Empire in 1852 to honor Alessandro Volta, an Italian physicist noted for developing the electric battery. This international prize awarded 50,000 French francs to extraordinary scientific discoveries related to electricity. The prize was instituted by the Ministry of Public Instruction with the personal funding of the French Emperor, the selection committee was usually constituted by members of the French Academy of Sciences. Notable recipients have included, Heinrich Ruhmkorff, who commercialised the induction coil, and Zénobe Gramme, inventor of the Gramme dynamo and
Alessandro Volta to be a person inclined towards domestic life and this was more apparent in his later years. At this time he tended to live secluded from public life and more for the sake of his family until his eventual death in 1827 from a series of illnesses which began in 1823. The SI unit of electric potential is named in his honour as the volt. Volta was born in Como, a town in present-day northern Italy, on 18 February 1745. In 1794, Volta married an aristocratic lady also from Como, Teresa Peregrini, with whom he raised three sons: Zanino, Flaminio,