10 Facts About Giovanni Schiaparelli

Giovanni Virginio Schiaparelli was an Italian astronomer and science historian.

Giovanni Schiaparelli studied at the University of Turin, graduating in 1854, and later did research at Berlin Observatory, under Encke.

Giovanni Schiaparelli was a senator of the Kingdom of Italy, a member of the Accademia dei Lincei, the Accademia delle Scienze di Torino and the Regio Istituto Lombardo, and is particularly known for his studies of Mars.

An observer of objects in the Solar System, Giovanni Schiaparelli worked on binary stars, discovered the large main-belt asteroid 69 Hesperia on 29 April 1861, and demonstrated that the meteor showers were associated with comets.

Giovanni Schiaparelli proved, for example, that the orbit of the Leonid meteor shower coincided with that of the comet Tempel-Tuttle.

Giovanni Schiaparelli was a keen observer of the inner planets Mercury and Venus.

Giovanni Schiaparelli made several drawings and determined their rotation periods.

Giovanni Schiaparelli was a scholar of the history of classical astronomy.

Giovanni Schiaparelli was the first to realize that the concentric spheres of Eudoxus of Cnidus and Callippus, unlike those used by many astronomers of later times, were not to be taken as material objects, but only as part of an algorithm similar to the modern Fourier series.

Giovanni Schiaparelli was elected to the American Philosophical Society in 1901.