BECCARIA, GIOVAN BATISTA, a celebrated electrician of the preceding century, was born at Mondavi, in Italy, on the 3d of October 1716. We are told that he sprung from a creditable family, and that his brother Giuseppe Maria, and an uncle by the father's side, were both military officers. The first studies of Beccaria were prosecuted in the royal seminaries of his country, where, along with litera ture, he imbibed that love of retirement which so materially aids its cultivation ; and scarcely had he at tained the age of sixteen, when he repaired to Rome, for the purpose of adopting the religious habit. He accordingly became a monk of an order of regulars in the Scudie Pie, where he designed to complete his learning : but, urged by the influence of natural genius, he was diverted from the obscurities of scho lastic inquiries to the more luminous paths of philo sophy, in which he made rapid progress. He had scarcely terminated his own studies, when he was called upon to teach the belles lettres in the Collegio d' Urbi no, one of the principal rank ; and the talents and diligence which he displayed in his new office, amply justified the choice made by his superiors. Beccaria at this period produced some elegant compositions in Latin verse, which are disseminated in various col lections. He admired poetry ; and the works of Catullus, Virgil, and Dante, were the inseparable companions of his leisure hours. His admiration, however, of the more enlarged and solid field of ma thematics and physics predominating over the fictions of poetry, he resolved thenceforward to devote him self to them exclusively. He found an opportunity of lecturing on these subjects, first in the Royal College of Palermo, and afterwards in the public schools of St Calasanzio in Rome, where his lectures were esteemed full of useful and curious information. Beccaria had likewise the good fortune to be em ployed in some public commissions, which were sa tisfactorily discharged by him ; and, in particular, when the Augustine monks erected a great fabric which obscured a Portuguese church, he had to cal culate the number of hours in a year that the light was taken away, as compensation was to be made in money. He testified much zeal in inculcating the principles of science into youth; and although those in Rome capable of teaching were greater mathe maticians, as Boscovich, Jacquier, and Le Sieur, he was perhaps better qualified for observing the opera tions of nature, and unfolding them to his pupils.
Beccaria's fame having reached the ears of his so vereign, he was, in 1748, appointed to fill the chair of natural philosophy in the Royal University of Turin, with which he received a considerable salary. On being requested by the grand duke of Savoy to. repeat Needham's microscopical observations, he a dapted a reflector to the solar microscope, which threw the object on a horizontal surface. Not long after wards, directing his attention to correct the errors produced by pendulums from contraction and expan sion by heat and cold, he succeeded in making an im ' provement on them. He devised a double pendulum, consisting of two rods, connected together in such a manner, that when one rod elevated or depressed the centre of oscillation, the other produced the oppo site effect, so that this centre was always found in the same point. Beccaria likewise corrected an error of S. Gravesande concerning the velocity of a pendulum at the end of descent ; and pointed out an oversight of Newton in the theory of falling bodies : He also invented an ingenious formula for finding the fdci of lenses, and explained many other interesting problems in science.
The phenomena of electricity having attracted an extraordinary share of the public notice in general, as well as that of philosophers, did not escape Bce caria. He entered ardently into its principles and effects, which he endeavoured to explain by a derful variety of experiments and observations. These were long protracted, and frequently reverted to, and skew the fertility of his mind in analysis and combi nation. In this branch helms perhaps made deeper enquiry, advanced more rational theories, and thrown greater light on the operations of nature connected with it, than any other individual has done. In the year 17.53, he published a volume called Elettricismo Artrficiale e Naturale, which, after receiving numer ous additions during several successive years, was, along with other tracts, translated into English in 1776. In that work he enters on all the different ap pearances of electricity in the natural state, and spews _how they can be imitated by art. He conceives that the numerous atmospherical phenomena, not only of thunder and lightning, which constitute natural elec tricity in its most evident and terrific shape, but that hail, rain, and water-spouts, proceed from it ; and that earthquakes and volcanoes have also an intimate relation with it.