Augusto Righi was an Italian

Italy

Italy , officially the Italian Republic languages]] under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages. In each of these, Italy's official name is as follows:;;;;;;;;), is a unitary parliamentary republic in South-Central Europe. To the north it borders France, Switzerland, Austria and...

 physicist

Physicist

A physicist is a scientist who studies or practices physics. Physicists study a wide range of physical phenomena in many branches of physics spanning all length scales: from sub-atomic particles of which all ordinary matter is made to the behavior of the material Universe as a whole...

 and a pioneer in the study of electromagnetism

Electromagnetism

Electromagnetism is one of the four fundamental interactions in nature. The other three are the strong interaction, the weak interaction and gravitation...

. He was born and died in Bologna

Bologna

Bologna is the capital city of Emilia-Romagna, in the Po Valley of Northern Italy. The city lies between the Po River and the Apennine Mountains, more specifically, between the Reno River and the Savena River. Bologna is a lively and cosmopolitan Italian college city, with spectacular history,...

.

His early research, conducted in Bologna between 1872 and 1880, was primarily in electrostatics. In 1880 he became ordinary professor in physics at the University of Palermo, where he studied the conduction of heat and electricity in bismuth. From 1885 to 1889 he was a professor at the University of Padua (Padova), studying the photoelectric effect. Towards the end of 1889 he was called to the University of Bologna, his home city, where he worked for the rest of his life on subjects such as the Zeeman Effect, 'Roentgen rays', magnetism and the results of Michelson's experiments.

One of Righi's famous pupils was Guglielmo Marconi

Guglielmo Marconi

Guglielmo Marconi was an Italian inventor, known as the father of long distance radio transmission and for his development of Marconi's law and a radio telegraph system. Marconi is often credited as the inventor of radio, and indeed he shared the 1909 Nobel Prize in Physics with Karl Ferdinand...

. Marconi studied under Righi at his lab in Bologna.

External links

• Righi at chem.ch.huji.ac.il

• The professor of G. Marconi. http://www.radiomarconi.com/marconi/augustorighi.html