Distant glances: American members of the Gioeni Academy in the nineteenth century

Doctors, exiles, chemists, geologists, philosophers and collectors of natural history, astrophysicists for solar eclipses

Abstract

The events that bind fourteen partners of the nineteenth century to the Gioeni Academy of Catania are described. In the United States and Europe the scientific and political literature is very rich in information on the personalities aggregated to the Gioeni Academy, from the beginning of its foundation until the end of the 19th century. Unfortunately, their scientific contribution to the cultural life of the Academy was almost nil, limited to exchanges of letters and literature references only, with the exception of the presence of the mathematician B. Peirce, of the geodesist C.A. Schott and of the astronomer J.C. Watson on site (direct meetings with local members of the Gioeni Academy in the astronomical observation stations) during the occasion of the total solar eclipse of December 22nd, 1870, observed in Sicily by American and European scientific expeditions.