BOSCOVICH, Ruggiero Giuseppe, Ital ian Jesuit, mathematician, astronomer and phi losopher: b. Ragusa, 18 May 1711; d. Milan, 12 Feb. 1787. After elementary education he entered the Society of Jesus in his 15th year and during a novitiate marked by brilliancy in mathematics and philosophy, before grad uation, was appointed professor of mathematics in the Collegium Romanum in 1740. The re mainder of his life was passed in scientific pur suits and important diplomatic missions. He visited London in 1760 and was elected a mem ber of the Royal Society. In 1774 he went to Paris when the Jesuit order was suppressed; in 1783 he returned to Bassano to supervise the printing of his works and finally retired to Milan where insanity supervened on melan cholia and he died four years later. He was the first Italian to advocate Newton's theories; in his 'Philosophise Naturalis Theoria' (Vienna 1758) he expounds a molecular theory of matter. He wrote numerous treatises on
astronomy and other branches of physical science; his didactic poem, Solis ac Luna: Defectibus> (London 1764), was translated into French by the Abbe de Barruel (Paris 1779); his narrative of his journey from Constanti nople to Poland appeared in French in 1772, in German in 1779 and in Italian in 1784; he published annotated editions with supplements of Noceti's works on the rainbow and the aurora borealis, and of Benedict Stay's poems on the Cartesian and other modern philo sophical systems; and his complete works ap peared as 'Opera Pertinentia ad Opticam et Astronomiam> (5 vols., Bassano 1785). Con sult Oster, M., (Roger Joseph Boscovich als naturphilosoph> (Bonn 1909).