Giovanni Battista Donati (; 16 December 182620 September 1873) was an

Italian Italian(s) may refer to: * Anything of, from, or related to the people of Italy over the centuries ** Italians, an ethnic group or simply a citizen of the Italian Republic or Italian Kingdom ** Italian language, a Romance language *** Regional Ita ...

astronomer An astronomer is a scientist in the field of astronomy who focuses their studies on a specific question or field outside the scope of Earth. They observe astronomical objects such as stars, planets, natural satellite, moons, comets and galaxy, g ...

. Donati graduated from the university of his native city,

Pisa Pisa ( , or ) is a city and ''comune'' in Tuscany, central Italy, straddling the Arno just before it empties into the Ligurian Sea. It is the capital city of the Province of Pisa. Although Pisa is known worldwide for its leaning tower, the cit ...

, and afterwards joined the staff of the

Observatory An observatory is a location used for observing terrestrial, marine, or celestial events. Astronomy, climatology/meteorology, geophysical, oceanography and volcanology are examples of disciplines for which observatories have been constructed. His ...

Florence Florence ( ; it, Firenze ) is a city in Central Italy and the capital city of the Tuscany region. It is the most populated city in Tuscany, with 383,083 inhabitants in 2016, and over 1,520,000 in its metropolitan area.Bilancio demografico an ...

in 1852. He was appointed director in 1864. Donati was also a pioneer in the

spectroscopic Spectroscopy is the field of study that measures and interprets the electromagnetic spectra that result from the interaction between electromagnetic radiation and matter as a function of the wavelength or frequency of the radiation. Matter wav ...

study of the

star A star is an astronomical object comprising a luminous spheroid of plasma (physics), plasma held together by its gravity. The List of nearest stars and brown dwarfs, nearest star to Earth is the Sun. Many other stars are visible to the naked ...

s, the

Sun The Sun is the star at the center of the Solar System. It is a nearly perfect ball of hot plasma, heated to incandescence by nuclear fusion reactions in its core. The Sun radiates this energy mainly as light, ultraviolet, and infrared radi ...

, and

comet A comet is an icy, small Solar System body that, when passing close to the Sun, warms and begins to release gases, a process that is called outgassing. This produces a visible atmosphere or coma, and sometimes also a tail. These phenomena ar ...

s. He observed the total

solar eclipse A solar eclipse occurs when the Moon passes between Earth and the Sun, thereby obscuring the view of the Sun from a small part of the Earth, totally or partially. Such an alignment occurs during an eclipse season, approximately every six month ...

of 18 July 1860, at

Torreblanca Torreblanca is a municipality in the province of Castellón, Valencian Community, Spain. The town is located south of the Serra d'Irta mountain range close to the Mediterranean Sea. Torreblanca is located 36 km ENE of the town of Castell ...

Spain , image_flag = Bandera de España.svg , image_coat = Escudo de España (mazonado).svg , national_motto = ''Plus ultra'' (Latin)(English: "Further Beyond") , national_anthem = (English: "Royal March") , i ...

, and in the same year began experiments in stellar spectroscopy. In 1862 he published a memoir, ''Intorno alle strie degli spettri stellari'', which indicated the feasibility of a physical classification of the stars. Donati also used spectroscopy of comets to determine their physical composition, in particular with the comet 1864b, which spectrum he found containing three emitting lines which would four years later be identified by

William Huggins Sir William Huggins (7 February 1824 – 12 May 1910) was an English astronomer best known for his pioneering work in astronomical spectroscopy together with his wife, Margaret. Biography William Huggins was born at Cornhill, Middlesex, in ...

to be

carbon Carbon () is a chemical element with the symbol C and atomic number 6. It is nonmetallic and tetravalent In chemistry, the valence (US spelling) or valency (British spelling) of an element is the measure of its combining capacity with o ...

. He discovered that the spectrum changed when a comet approached the Sun, and that heating caused it to emit its own light rather than reflected sunlight: he concluded that the composition of comets is, at least in part, gaseous. Between 1854 and 1864 he discovered six new

s, including the spectacular

Comet Donati :''There are three Donati comets: C/1855 L1 (a.k.a. 1855 II), C/1858 L1 (this one), and C/1864 R1 (a.k.a. 1864 I).'' Comet Donati, or Donati's Comet, formally designated C/1858 L1 and 1858 VI, is a long-period comet named after the Italian ast ...

(C/1858 L1), found in 1858. An investigation of the great

aurora An aurora (plural: auroras or aurorae), also commonly known as the polar lights, is a natural light display in Earth's sky, predominantly seen in high-latitude regions (around the Arctic and Antarctic). Auroras display dynamic patterns of bri ...

of 4 February 1872 led Donati to refer such phenomena to a distinct branch of science, designated by him "cosmical meteorology". However, he could not follow up on the subject, as he died from

cholera Cholera is an infection of the small intestine by some strains of the bacterium ''Vibrio cholerae''. Symptoms may range from none, to mild, to severe. The classic symptom is large amounts of watery diarrhea that lasts a few days. Vomiting and ...

, which he had contracted while attending a scientific convention in

Vienna en, Viennese , iso_code = AT-9 , registration_plate = W , postal_code_type = Postal code , postal_code = , timezone = CET , utc_offset = +1 , timezone_DST ...

, the following year.Giovanni Battista DONATI
. in G. F. Tricomi, Matematici italiani del primo secolo dello stato unitario, Memorie dell'Accademia delle Scienze di Torino. Classe di Scienze fisiche matematiche e naturali, serie IV tomo I, 1962.Донати, Джанбатиста

Great Soviet Encyclopedia The ''Great Soviet Encyclopedia'' (GSE; ) is one of the largest Russian-language encyclopedias, published in the Soviet Union from 1926 to 1990. After 2002, the encyclopedia's data was partially included into the later ''Bolshaya rossiyskaya e ...

(in Russian)

Honors

*The crater

Donati Donati is an Italian surname. Notable people with the surname include: *Angelo Donati (1885-1960), Italian banker and philanthropist * Baldassare Donati (1525/30–1603), Italian composer of the late Renaissance *Buoso Donati (—ca. 1285), charact ...

on the

Moon The Moon is Earth's only natural satellite. It is the fifth largest satellite in the Solar System and the largest and most massive relative to its parent planet, with a diameter about one-quarter that of Earth (comparable to the width of ...

*Asteroid

16682 Donati Events January–March * January 23 – The Triple Alliance of 1668 is formed between England, Sweden and the United Provinces of the Netherlands. * February 13 – In Lisbon, a peace treaty is established between Afonso V ...

References

External links

G. Donati
@

Astrophysics Data System The SAO/NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS) is an online database of over 16 million astronomy and physics papers from both peer reviewed and non-peer reviewed sources. Abstracts are available free online for almost all articles, and full scanned a ...

Portrait of Giovanni Battista Donati from the Lick Observatory Records Digital Archive, UC Santa Cruz Library's Digital Collections
1826 births 1873 deaths 19th-century Italian astronomers Discoverers of comets Deaths from cholera Infectious disease deaths in Tuscany Recipients of the Lalande Prize {{Italy-astronomer-stub