Science and technology in Italy various astronomical observations, and initial formulation of the first and second laws of motion. Galileo was suppressed by the Catholic Church, but was a founder of modern science. The astronomer Giovanni Domenico Cassini, who made many important discoveries about the Solar System; the physicist Alessandro Volta, who invented the electric battery, thus providing for the first time a sustained source of current electricity; the mathematicians Giuseppe Peano, Lagrange, Fibonacci, and Gerolamo Cardano, whose "Ars Magna" is generally recognized as the first modern treatment on mathematics, made fundamental advances to the field; Marcello Malpighi, a doctor and founder of microscopic anatomy;
History of electrochemistry considered the brain to be the most important organ for the secretion of this "electric fluid" and that the nerves conducted the fluid to the muscles. He believed the tissues acted similarly to the outer and inner surfaces of Leyden jars. The flow of this electric fluid provided a stimulus to the muscle fibres. Galvani's scientific colleagues generally accepted his views, but Alessandro Volta, the outstanding professor of physics at the University of Pavia, was not convinced by the analogy between muscles and Leyden jars. Deciding that the frogs' legs used in Galvani's experiments served only as an electroscope, he