Giovanni Battista Beccaria (October 3, 1716 - May 27, 1781), Italian physicist, was born at Mondovi, and entered the religious order of the Pious Schools in 1732.

He became professor of experimental physics, first at Palermo and then at Rome, and was appointed to a similar situation at Turin in 1748. He was afterwards made tutor to the young princes de Chablais and de Carignan, and continued to reside principally at Turin during the remainder of his life. In May 1755 he was elected a fellow of the Royal Society of London, and published several papers on electrical subjects in the Phil. Trans.

Beccaria did much, in the way both of experiment and exposition, to spread a knowledge of the electrical researches of Franklin and others. His principal work was the treatise Dell’ Elettricismo Naturale ed Artificiale (1753), which was translated into English in 1776.

This entry was originally from the 1911 Encyclopedia Britannica.