Macedonio Melloni (11 April 1798 – 11 August 1854) was an Italian physicist, notable for demonstrating that radiant heat has similar physical properties to those of light.
Life
Born at Parma, in 1824 he was appointed professor at the local University but was compelled to escape to France after taking part in the revolution of 1831. In 1839 he went to Naples and was soon appointed director of the Vesuvius Observatory, a post that he held until 1848. In 1845, he was elected a foreign member of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences.
Melloni's reputation as a physicist rests principally on his discoveries in radiant heat, made with the aid of the thermomultiplier, a combination of thermopile and galvanometer.[1] In 1831, soon after the discovery of thermoelectricity by Thomas Johann Seebeck, he and Leopoldo Nobili employed the instrument in experiments especially concerned with characteristics of (in modern language) black-body radiation transmitted by various materials.