Giuseppe Barilli (20 April 1812 – 18 December 1894), also known under his pseudonym Quirico Filopanti, was an Italian
mathematician and politician.
Biography
Barilli was born in
Budrio
Budrio ( Eastern Bolognese: ) is a town and ''comune'' in the Metropolitan City of Bologna, in Emilia-Romagna, Italy; it is east of Bologna.
Budrio is the birthplace of Giuseppe Barilli, better known under his pseudonym of Quirico Filopanti, an I ...
, near
Bologna, Italy, on 20 April 1812. He graduated in 1834 in mathematics and became professor of mechanics and hydraulics in 1848.
He was actively committed in the political affairs of the
Italian unification
The unification of Italy ( it, Unità d'Italia ), also known as the ''Risorgimento'' (, ; ), was the 19th-century political and social movement that resulted in the consolidation of different states of the Italian Peninsula into a single ...
movement and in 1849 took part in the establishment of the
Roman Republic. He was appointed secretary of the Assemblea Costituente (constituent assembly) and was the author of the ''Decreto Fondamentale'' ("Fundamental Decree") which on 9 February 1849 declared the temporal government of the Pope as forfeited and proclaimed the Republic.
After the fall of the Republic he found shelter in the United States and afterwards in London, United Kingdom. Even after the formation of the
Kingdom of Italy and his return to Italy, he had to leave his appointment as teacher of
mechanics at the
University of Bologna since he repeatedly refused to take his oath of allegiance to the monarchy. In 1876 he was elected as a member of the Parliament for the
Republican Party
Republican Party is a name used by many political parties around the world, though the term most commonly refers to the United States' Republican Party.
Republican Party may also refer to:
Africa
*Republican Party (Liberia)
* Republican Part ...
. He died poor in Bologna in 1894.
In his work ''Miranda'' in 1858 he develops the idea of
time zones. Filopanti's hypothesis was to ideally split up the earth into 24 areas (zones) along the lines of the meridians, each of which should have its own time. Each time zone should differ from the next by one hour, whereas minutes and seconds should coincide. The first time zone should be centred on Rome's
meridian
Meridian or a meridian line (from Latin ''meridies'' via Old French ''meridiane'', meaning “midday”) may refer to
Science
* Meridian (astronomy), imaginary circle in a plane perpendicular to the planes of the celestial equator and horizon
* ...
. The splitting into time zones should establish the local time (L). His hypothesis provided also with the establishing of a universal time (U) that should be used as only datum line in
astronomy and
telegraph communications.
Filopanti as paradoxer
Filopanti authored several books with peculiar titles, as ''Cesar at the Rubicon'' (1847), ''On the Uses of Canvas in Hydraulics'' (1866), ''God Exists'' (1881), ''God is a Liberal'' (1880), ''Synopsis of the Geouranian Theory, or On Some Singular Relations Between the Earth and the Sky'' (1862). His book ''Miranda. A Book Divided Into Three Parts, Entitled Souls, Numbers, Stars, on the Neo-Christian Religion'', London, 1858, was listed by
Augustus De Morgan in his ''A Budget of Paradoxes''.
[ A Budget of Paradoxes, London, 1915, volume II, page 93-94]
References
External links
Cenni SISM
{{DEFAULTSORT:Filopanti, Quirico
1812 births
1894 deaths
People from the Province of Bologna
19th-century Italian mathematicians
Italian politicians