Research, teaching and science popularization in the XVIII century: an analysis of the correspondence of Jacopo Belgrado with Giovanni Poleni

Europoleni is a project promoted by the Centre for Correspondence and Diary Studies (CECJI) of the University of Brest, France. Its purpose is to digitalize the correspondence of the physicist Giovanni Poleni (1683-1761), the first professor of experimental physics at the Physics Cabinet of Padova. The letters he exchanged with Jacopo Belgrado (1704-1789), mathematics and physics professor, Jesuit abbot and founder of the astronomical observatory of Parma, have been transcribed and analyzed for this thesis. They will be then encoded to be available online, completed with a report of their scientific contents. Thanks to this work, it has been possible, besides widening the knowledge about Poleni, to bring back to light the figure of Belgrado. Not so many sources are available about this fascinating character, tirelessly busy on the spiritual and scientific fronts. Careful research allowed to study his life, works and experiments, and to contextualize them in the Enlightenment movement of the eighteenth century. Through this thesis, guided by his letter exchange with his colleague and friend Giovanni Poleni, we will discover the main steps of Belgrado’s lifeworks.