Roberto Mantovani (25 March 1854 – 10 January 1933), was an Italian

geologist A geologist is a scientist who studies the solid, liquid, and gaseous matter that constitutes Earth and other terrestrial planets, as well as the processes that shape them. Geologists usually study geology, earth science, or geophysics, althoug ...

and

violin The violin, sometimes known as a '' fiddle'', is a wooden chordophone ( string instrument) in the violin family. Most violins have a hollow wooden body. It is the smallest and thus highest-pitched instrument ( soprano) in the family in regu ...

ist. He proposed an early model of continental drift in which a single continent broke up and the continents were displaced by thermal expansion and volcanism. Mantovani was born in

Parma Parma (; egl, Pärma, ) is a city in the northern Italian region of Emilia-Romagna known for its architecture, music, art, prosciutto (ham), cheese and surrounding countryside. With a population of 198,292 inhabitants, Parma is the second mos ...

. His father, Timoteo, died seven months after his birth. His mother, Luigia Ferrari, directed him to studies, and at the age of 11 he was accepted as a boarder in the Royal School of Music, where he was conferred with the

Honorary Degree An honorary degree is an academic degree for which a university (or other degree-awarding institution) has waived all of the usual requirements. It is also known by the Latin phrases ''honoris causa'' ("for the sake of the honour") or ''ad hon ...

in August 1872. He always preferred the exact sciences and literature to music. In 1889 and 1909 Mantovani published a hypothesis of an

expanding earth The expanding Earth or growing Earth hypothesis argues that the position and relative movement of continents is at least partially due to the volume of Earth increasing. Conversely, geophysical global cooling was the hypothesis that various feat ...

and

continental drift Continental drift is the hypothesis that the Earth's continents have moved over geologic time relative to each other, thus appearing to have "drifted" across the ocean bed. The idea of continental drift has been subsumed into the science of pl ...

. He assumed that a closed continent covered the entire surface of a smaller earth. Through

volcanic A volcano is a rupture in the crust of a planetary-mass object, such as Earth, that allows hot lava, volcanic ash, and gases to escape from a magma chamber below the surface. On Earth, volcanoes are most often found where tectonic plates a ...

activity because of

thermal expansion Thermal expansion is the tendency of matter to change its shape, area, volume, and density in response to a change in temperature, usually not including phase transitions. Temperature is a monotonic function of the average molecular kinetic ...

this continent broke, so that the new continents were drifting away from each other because of further expansion of the rip-zones, where now the oceans lie.

Alfred Wegener Alfred Lothar Wegener (; ; 1 November 1880 – November 1930) was a German climatologist, geologist, geophysicist, meteorologist, and polar researcher. During his lifetime he was primarily known for his achievements in meteorology and ...

saw similarities to his own theory, but did not support Mantovani's earth-expansion hypothesis. He wrote: He died in

Paris Paris () is the Capital city, capital and List of communes in France with over 20,000 inhabitants, most populous city of France, with an estimated population of 2,165,423 residents in 2019 in an area of more than 105 km² (41 sq mi), ma ...

References

External links

* *Biography of Mantovani n Italian http://www.brera.unimi.it/SISFA/atti/1996/scalera.html {{DEFAULTSORT:Mantovani, Roberto 1854 births 1933 deaths 20th-century Italian geologists Italian classical violinists Male classical violinists 19th-century Italian geologists