The Macedonio Melloni Collection
The collection of instruments that belonged to the Parmesan scientist Macedonio Melloni (1798-1854) is now on display at the Physics Department at the Parma Campus. It includes precious documents of the evolution of the experimental physical sciences, such as eighteenth and nineteenth-century pieces of laboratory instrumentation for optics, thermology, such as microscopes, optical benches, thermopiles, tuning forks, including those used by the illustrious physicist from Parma.
Termometro metallico di Bréguet by Abraham-Louis Breguet (Svizzera,1747 - Parigi,1823)Sistema Museale Università di Parma
The Museum was born as a collection of instruments at the Institute of Physics which was located in the Central University Building until the second decade of the last century.
Microscopio ottico by Macedonio Melloni (1798-1854)Sistema Museale Università di Parma
Later, and until 1987, it was transferred to the university in via Massimo D’Azeglio before finding its current location on the South University Campus.
The ancient tools
Some of the instruments collected in the Melloni Museum are ancient specimens that date back to the "Physics Studies" held by the Jesuits. Indeed Ranuccio Farnese, in 1564, entrusted the "Studio", including all the faculties, to the hands of the Society of Jesus, making them reside in the specially built structure starting from the mid-seventeenth century, today the Central University Building.
Sphaera MundiSistema Museale Università di Parma
Sphaera Mundi
The religious study had important teachers who excelled particularly in the scientific field. The Bolognese Jesuit Giuseppe Biancani, famous scientist, author of the Sphaera Mundi, an astronomical work, published starting in 1620, in which the traditional geocentric layout was replaced by that of Brahe, taught in Parma in the first twenty years of the seventeenth century.
Rooms of the Laboratory of Macedonio Melloni
L’istituto di fisica aveva laboratori e aule attrezzate come l’aula ad anfiteatro con gradinate in legno del Teatro Fisico, costruito negli ultimi decenni del Settecento e collocato nell’ala orientale del Palazzo Centrale dell’Università, al piano nobile.
The Specola in Origin
In the central building, on the turret located in the south-west corner of the Central University building, a specola was built. Father Belgrade had the idea of building it around 1750 and the inauguration took place in 1757 on the occasion of a lunar eclipse.
Specola AttualeSistema Museale Università di Parma
Today only the turret remains of the specola
Portrait of Macedonio Melloni
An important nucleus of the Museum's collection dates back to the early decades of the 19th century when Macedonio Melloni (1798 - 1854), appointed in 1827 as a very young professor of theoretical and practical physics at the university, became the director of the Physics Cabinet.
Pendolo perpetuoSistema Museale Università di Parma
Melloni added to the pieces of the previous century, including a precious electric perpetual motion, which remained at the Institute of Physics, his original instruments, specially built when he began teaching.
Melloni Work Table
Da metà degli anni ‘20 del Novecento l’Istituto di Fisica cambia sede spostandosi in via D’Azeglio e con esso anche la raccolta di strumenti antichi, inclusi quelli utilizzati da Melloni; in particolare il banco ottico o uno strumento diffuso in tutto il mondo e conosciuto come “banco di Melloni,” con cui furono ottenuti risultati rilevanti nella teoria della diffusione del calore secondo le intuizioni di Melloni sulla comune natura del calore e della luce.
Elettrometro di Thomson modificato da Mascart by Eléuthère Nicolas Mascart (1837-1908)Sistema Museale Università di Parma
The two-needle brass electroscope that came to our museum thanks to the gift that his wife made of it to the Physics Institute of Parma after her husband's death.
Withdrawal
After the Moti of 1848, Melloni retired to private life in his home in Portici, where he published a monographic work on his research on radiant heat, entitled "La thermochrose, ou la coloration calorifique", and where he died of cholera, in 1854.
Thanks to Massimo Savino and Giovanni Calori
