Alessandro Volta (1745-1827) : El triunfo de la electricidad

When Luigi Galvani made frog legs convulse with electric shocks, he believed he had discovered "animal electricity," the secret of life itself. Alessandro Volta, a native of Como and a stubborn professor at the University of Pavia, thought his colleague was completely wrong. From that fierce dispute was born the invention that would change the world: the electric battery. But Volta's path to glory was fraught with battles. Fierce disputes over the priority of his discoveries with Spallanzani, Lavoisier, and Gay-Lussac. A controversy over the nature of the battery —contact potential or chemical effect?— that would last a century and even involve Faraday himself at the age of 72. A fascinated Napoleon who created a prize of 60,000 francs to solve the enigma. A university faculty determined to sabotage his educational reforms. A chaotic love life that scandalized Como until, already an "old man," he married, "to the relief of many." This book is the portrait of a brilliant, stubborn, and controversial scientist who lived on the border between two worlds: the speculative physics of the Enlightenment —when electricity was a parlor trick— and the experimental rigor of modern science. A man who defended erroneous ideas with the same passion as correct ones. Who revolutionized the teaching of physics while his colleagues boycotted him. Who refused to become a priest or a lawyer —as his family demanded— to dedicate himself to "delving into the mysteries of the Universe." With his battery, Volta activated the mechanisms of electric current. From there, everything would spring: Davy would isolate new elements, Faraday would discover electromagnetic induction, Maxwell would unify the forces of electromagnetism. And in an unstoppable cascade: telegraphs, motors, light bulbs, the Electric Age that shapes every moment of our lives. Based on unpublished documents from the archives of Como and Pavia, private letters and original manuscripts, this biography recovers the complete Volta: genius, rebel, lover, obsessive; the man behind the volt, the Princeps Electricorum.