Giovanni Giorgi
| Giovanni Giorgi | |
|---|---|
Giovanni Giorgi
|
|
| Born |
27 November 1871 Lucca |
| Died | 19 August 1950 (aged 78) Castiglioncello, Livorno |
| Nationality | Italian |
| Engineering career | |
| Institutions | University of Rome |
| Projects | Giorgi system of measurement |
Giovanni Giorgi (27 November 1871 – 19 August 1950) was an Italian physicist and electrical engineer who proposed the Giorgi system of measurement, the precursor to the International System of Units (SI).
Giorgi was born in Lucca and studied engineering at the Institute of Technology of Rome, he worked at Fornaci Giorgi in Ferentino, then was the director of the Technology Office of Rome between 1906 and 1923. He also taught at the University of Rome between 1913 and 1939. During World War II he moved to Ferentino.
Giorgi died in Castiglioncello, Livorno at the age of 79.
Toward the end of the 19th century, after James Clerk Maxwell's discoveries, it was clear that electric measurements could not be explained in terms of the three fundamental units of length, mass and time, and that some irrational coefficiens appeared in the equations without any logical physical reason. In 1901, Giorgi proposed to the Associazione elettrotecnica italiana (AEI) that the MKS system (which used the metre, kilogram and second as its fundamental units) should be extended with a fourth unit to be chosen from the units of electromagnetism, solving also the presence of the irrational coefficients.
In 1935 this was adopted by the International Electrotechnical Commission (IEC) as the M.K.S. System of Giorgi without specifying which electromagnetic unit would be the fourth fundamental unit. In 1946 the International Committee for Weights and Measures (CIPM) approved a proposal to use the ampere as that unit in a four-dimensional system, the MKSA system.
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