Carlo Giuseppe Matteo Marangoni (29 April 1840 – 14 April 1925) was an Italian
physicist
A physicist is a scientist who specializes in the field of physics, which encompasses the interactions of matter and energy at all length and time scales in the physical universe.
Physicists generally are interested in the root or ultimate ca ...
.
Biography
Marangoni graduated in 1865 from the
University of Pavia
The University of Pavia ( it, Università degli Studi di Pavia, UNIPV or ''Università di Pavia''; la, Alma Ticinensis Universitas) is a university located in Pavia, Lombardy, Italy. There was evidence of teaching as early as 1361, making it on ...
under the supervision of
Giovanni Cantoni with a dissertation entitled "" ("On the spreading of liquid droplets").
He then moved to
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 ...
where he first worked at the "Museo di Fisica" (1866) and later at the Liceo Dante (1870), where he held the position of High School Physics Teacher for 45 years until retirement in 1916.
He primarily studied surface phenomena in liquids, and the
Marangoni effect
The Marangoni effect (also called the Gibbs–Marangoni effect) is the mass transfer along an interface between two phases due to a gradient of the surface tension. In the case of temperature dependence, this phenomenon may be called thermo-capil ...
and the
Marangoni number are named after him. He also contributed to
meteorology
Meteorology is a branch of the atmospheric sciences (which include atmospheric chemistry and physics) with a major focus on weather forecasting. The study of meteorology dates back millennia, though significant progress in meteorology did no ...
and invented a ''Nefoscopio'' to observe clouds.
Aspirator and Compressor

Marangoni simplified the
aspirator for the measurement of
gas. A common flaw in aspirator were inaccurate measurements caused by ascending of
air or gas through descending liquid. The perfected device uses a couple of vessels attached to a fixed horizontal shaft, ''FE'', which rests on two erect supports. The shaft has various passages which conducts the functions of the taps. The water of the above receptacle releases into the bottom receptacle by passage ''A'', and through the tube, ''BC'', issuing at the lowest extremity at ''C''. The air within the bottom vessel is omitted by the passage ''DE'', cut into the shaft, meanwhile the air or gas is aspirated in the identical ratio by the passage, ''FG''.
[ T. O'Conor Sloane. Facts Worth Knowing Selected Mainly from the Scientific American for Household, Workshop, and Farm Embracing Practical and Useful Information for Every Branch of Industry. Hartford: S. S. Scranton. 1895.]
References
External links
Marangoni Obituary (in italian)(A list of Marangoni's publications are included in this obituary.)
1840 births
1925 deaths
University of Pavia alumni
19th-century Italian physicists
Scientists from Pavia
Fluid dynamicists
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