Giovanni Battista Venturi

Italian physicist

• Born: March 15, 1746; Bibbiano, Italy
• Died: April 24, 1822; Reggio Emilia, Italy

Italian priest, physicist, teacher, and diplomat Giovannia Battista Venturi’s career spanned the late eighteenth century to the early nineteenth century. In addition to exploring optics and acoustics, Venturi discovered a hydraulic principle that provided multiple practical—and commercial—applications. He also published works on the scientific contributions of Leonardo da Vinci and Galileo Galilei.

Also known as: Giambattista Venturi; Abbé Venturi

Primary field: Physics

Specialties: Hydrology; mechanics; optics; acoustics

Early Life

Giovanni Battista Venturi was born on March 15, 1746 into a wealthy family in the small northern Italian town of Bibbiano, northwest of Bologna. He received his early education at the Jesuit seminary in his hometown, where he excelled as a student.

After the age of ten, Venturi transferred to the seminary in the larger town of Reggio Emilia, where he took courses in logic, metaphysics, and mathematics. As a teenager, he enrolled at the University of Reggio Emilia (in operation from 1752 to 1772, and after 1998 incorporated into the University of Modena). At the university, he took classes from physicist Bonaventura Corti, and biologist Lazzaro Spallanzani.

Venturi graduated from the University of Reggio Emilia in the mid-1760s and returned to the Reggio Emilia seminary where, in 1769, he was ordained as a priest. The same year, he began teaching logic at the seminary. In 1774, he moved to the University of Modena, where he taught philosophy and geometry. Two years later, Venturi began teaching physics at Modena, with an emphasis on hydrology.

Venturi’s reputation as a scholar brought him to the attention of nobleman Gherardo, Marquis of Rangoni, magistrate of studies and minister to Francesco III d’Este, Duke of Modena and Reggio. In the late 1770s, under the patronage of the duke, Venturi was appointed state mathematician, auditor, and engineer.

Life’s Work

As state engineer during the reign of Duke Francesco III (died 1780) and his successor, Duke Ercole III, Venturi was put in charge of numerous public works projects in addition to his regular teaching duties. He oversaw the building of bridges, and supervised the rechanneling of rivers and the draining of swamplands. Venturi also wrote the official regulations governing the construction of dams on waterways within the dukedom. As an authority on hydraulics, he was often consulted in matters of arbitration.

When Ercole III founded the Atesine Academy of Fine Arts, a cultural and scientific organization, in 1785, Venturi was recruited a member. The following year, he was appointed as professor of experimental physics at the University of Modena. As part of his responsibilities in the new post, Venturi was charged with setting up a modern laboratory; the duke’s funding allowed him to equip the lab with the latest instruments. Another task the versatile Venturi accepted was the completion of a chronicle of literary accomplishments of the community of Modena, which had been left unfinished at the death of its original author, historian and critic Girolamo Tiraboschi, in 1794.

In early 1796, during the French Revolutionary War of the First Coalition (1792–97), French general Napoleon Bonaparte, on his first command, invaded northern Italy, where he successfully defeated a superior force of combined Austrian and Italian troops. Duke Ercole III of Modena was forced to flee his domain, and named Venturi as secretary to an Italian legation sent to Paris to negotiate favorable terms for peace. The drawn-out, contentious negotiations culminated in the Peace of Tolentino on February 19, 1797.

During an eighteen-month stay in Paris, Venturi exchanged ideas with many leading French scientists, among them physicist, astronomer, and mathematician Jean-Baptiste Biot, zoologist Georges Cuvier, mineralogist Abbé René Haüy, astronomer Joseph Jérôme Lalande, and mathematician Gaspard Monge. In Paris, Venturi published several scientific treatises on hydrology, including one that dealt with the movement of camphor on water, and his major work concerning lateral movement of fluids, which gave rise to what became known as the Venturi effect.

After returning to Modena, Venturi was briefly imprisoned because of what were perceived as unfavorable terms in the treaty he had helped to create. In addition, a movement sprang up to deny him a teaching position at the university. However, astronomer Pierre-Simon Laplace wrote in glowing terms of Venturi’s abilities to First Consul Napoleon Bonaparte. Napoleon responded to Laplace’s recommendations—and silenced Venturi’s critics—by making him an adjunct member of the French revolutionary law-making body called the Corps législatif. Venturi was also appointed as a professor at the military school in Modena, and was named a chevalier of the Legion of Honor. Venturi was later given a professorship of physics at the University of Pavia, in which capacity he was consulted to lend his expertise to mining and hydraulic projects.

Napoleon grew to trust Venturi to such a degree that he was sent on several diplomatic missions. At the beginning of the nineteenth century he was made diplomatic agent to the Helvetic Confederation to help sort out the governing principles of the French conquest known as Helvetic Republic. During his years in the Swiss Confederation, Venturi worked to develop constitutional tenets and achieve unity among a loose collection of self-governing cantons, helping to lay the foundation for what became the nation of Switzerland.

When his health began to fail, Venturi retired in 1813 and returned to Reggio Emilia. Napoloeon granted him a handsome pension. In his later years, Venturi devoted his time to the publication of scientific works. He died soon after his seventy-sixth birthday.

Impact

A multitalented individual with far-ranging interests, Venturi was one of Italy’s leading civil engineers, and considered Europe’s foremost expert on hydraulics. Equally at home in the fields of physics and philosophy, literature, and history, he earned considerable respect and admiration among colleagues throughout the scientific community, and gained the trust of rulers both at home and abroad. Despite his many abilities, Venturi was by all accounts a modest, humble man. One of his greatest and longest-lasting accomplishments was his promotion of the work of other scientists.

During his sojourn in Paris, Venturi was allowed to examine twelve volumes of Leonardo da Vinci’s notes. Napoleon’s troops had looted the Ambrosian Library in Milan and had carried off da Vinci’s notebooks as war trophies. Venturi deciphered da Vinci’s mirror writing then decoded and translated his work into French, adding a new dimension to da Vinci’s reputation as an artist by disseminating information for the first time about Leonardo’s studies on fluid dynamics, lift and drag in aerodynamics, anatomical and physiological research, and other scientific topics.

Venturi’s essay, Commentaries on the History and Theory of Optics (1814), was focused primarily on the Dioptra, a treatise from Heron of Alexandria regarding his invention of an instrument for surveying and measuring. Likewise, Venturi’s final major written work was intended to lend acclaim to a predecessor: the two-volume Memoirs and Hitherto Unpublished or Missing Letters by Galileo Galilei, Ordered and Explained with Annotations.

Bibliography

Darrigol, Olivier. Worlds of Flow: A History of Hydrodynamics from the Bernoullis to Prandtl. New York: Oxford UP: 2009. Print. Illustrated overview of the development in the field of fluid mechanics, from its beginnings in the eighteenth century, with an emphasis on individual landmarks that helped advance understanding of the science involved.

Downie, Neil A. The Ultimate Book of Saturday Science: The Very Best Backyard Science Experiments You Can Do Yourself. Princeton: Princeton UP, 2012. Print. An engaging how-to book gives instructions for conducting independent experiments to demonstrate scientific principles, including the Venturi effect. Illustrated.

Landrus, Matthew Hayden. Leonardo da Vinci’s Giant Crossbow. Berlin: Springer, 2010. Print. Includes reproductions of da Vinci’s notebook drawings. This focuses on the artist-scientist’s designs for proposed military weapons, incorporates information on Venturi’s decoding and translations of da Vinci’s work, and analyzes the technological aspects of the invented weapons.