Giuseppe Mercalli

Giuseppe Mercalli, an Italian volcanologist, was born on May 21st, 1850 in the Italian city of Milan. He was ordained a Roman Catholic priest and soon became a professor of the Natural Sciences at the seminary of Milan. He was removed from the professorship when he was suspected of liberalism for openly supporting a national monument to honor a great philosopher-priest named Antonio Rosmia. He was not out of a post for long, however, because the Italian government appointed him a professor at Domodossia, followed by a post at Reggio di Calabria and finally a post at the Naples University. He was also director of the Vessuvian Observatory until the time of his death. Despite the fact that he wrote 150 books on seismology which have been translated into 28 languages, he is best remembered today for his Mercalli scale for measuring earthquakes which is still used today. The Mercalli scale, unlike the more famous Richter scale, doesn't measure the actual energy released by an earthquake but how much effect an earthquake had on a given area, making it poorly suited for measuring earthquakes in sparsely populated areas, but ideal for comparing damage done by various tremors. The Mercalli scale gives a rating from I to XII, where I is felt only by a very few and XII has near total damage, few or no masonry structures remain standing, and objects are thrown into the air. Professor Mercalli died on the morning of March 19th, 1914. He was burned to death under suspicious circumstances, allegedly knocking over a paraffin lamp in his bedroom. He is thought to have been working through the night, as he often did (he once was found working at 11 o'clock AM when he had set an examination, upon hearing which he replied, “It surely can't be daylight yet!”), when the fatal accident occurred. His body was found, carbonized, by his bed, holding a blanket which he attempted to use to fend off the flames. The authorities of the time, however, stated a few days later that the professor was quite possibly murdered by strangling and soaked in petrol and burned to conceal the crime, because about $1,400 in the money of the time were found missing from the professor's apartment.

See also: Richter_scale