Italophilia priest and mathematician, born in 1598, is known for his work on indivisibles, a precursor of infinitesimal calculus, and for Cavalieri's principle in geometry, which partially anticipated integral calculus. Alessandro Volta, born in Como in 1745, invented the first true electrical battery, known as the voltaic pile. It provided a continuous source of electric current, which greatly benefitted Ampere, Ohm and other electrical experimenters in their development of basic electrical theory. A unit of electricity (volt) is named in his honor. Italians such as Fallopio, Eustachi, Malpighi, Morgagni and Valsalva were important pioneers of modern anatomy at the University of
Marsilio Landriani to convince Landriani to change over to the new chemistry, but he never was able to decide between phlogiston and oxygen. After 1790 he dealt exclusively with chemical applications of electric phenomena, and the improvement of physics and meteorology instruments. During his career he enjoyed a popularity comparable only to that of Alessandro Volta and Lazzaro Spallanzani, of all Italian scientists of that time. Marsilio Landriani Marsilio Landriani (Milan, 1751 – Vienna, 1815) was an Italian chemist, physicist and meteorologist. He became known with his first book, (Physical investigations on the salubrity of air), published in 1775. In it he