FRISI

ITALY (see also List of Individuals)

\

13.4.1728 Milano/I - 22.11.1784 Milano/I

\

Paolo Frisi was born in the former Austrian part of Northern Italy. He was educated in a monastery. A professor of philosophy from 1753 to 1756 in Milan he then moved in the same position to the Pisa University. In 1764, Frisi returned to Milan and there was a leading authority in mathematics and sciences. He was awarded a large number of prizes on an international scale: He was elected to the Académie des Sciences of Paris in 1753, and then elected a Fellow of the Royal Society in London in 1757. He was also a Member of the Academies of Saint Petersburg and Berlin.

\

Frisi made a number of contributions to astronomy, thereby studying the motion of the Earth and was awarded a prize of the Berlin Academy for his 1758 memoir. He in addition investigated the causes for the shape and the size of the Earth using the theory of gravity. In hydraulics, Frisi was responsible for the design of the canal between Milan and Pavia in Lombardy. The works were initiated only in 1819 thereby following his scheme. Italy was in the early 19th century the European country with the most advanced schemes in canals, and many of the canal builders visited Lombardy to have a look on the "Italian appraoch". It should be noted that no definite equations on the uniform flow of water at this time were available, allowing the selection of the optimum slope of a waterway to inhibit major sediment deposition or erosion of the canal bed. The other major work in hydraulics was his 1765 memoir on the regulation of rivers and torrents. Frisi also made contributions to the history of exact sciences and thereby wrote on Galilei, Newton and d'Alembert.

\

_{Frisi, P. (1756). Elogi di Galileo Galilei e Bonaventura Cavalieri e di Isacco Newton. Galeazzi: Milano.}

_{Frisi, P. (1758). Dissertatio de moto diurno terrae. Pisa.}

_{Frisi, P. (1765). Dei fiumi e dei torrenti. Raccolta d'autori che trattano del moto dell'acque 7.}

_Milano.

_{Frisi, P. (1777). Istituzioni di meccanica, d'idrostatica, d'idrometria e dell architettura statica e idraulica. Galeazzi: Milano.}

_{Poggendorff, J.C. (1863). Paolo Frisi. Biographisch-Literarisches Handwörterbuch 1: 806-807.}

_{Barth: Leipzig, with bibliography. Verri, P. (1787). Operette scelte di Frisi http://www.ras.ru/win/db/show_per.asp?P=.id-52566.ln-en con le memorie storiche intorno al medesimo. Milano. http://www.ras.ru/win/db/show_per.asp?P=.id-52566.ln-en http://www.melegnano.net/rif1006.htm P http://www.melegnano.net/rif1006.htm P}