Ottaviano-Fabrizio Mossotti

Ottaviano-Fabrizio Mossotti was an Italian physicist who was exiled from Italy for his liberal ideas. During the First Italian War of Independence, he led a "battalion of students", part of a delegation from the Grand Duchy of Tuscany. He later taught astronomy and physics at the University of Buenos Aires. His name is associated with a type of multiple-element lens for correcting spherical aberration and coma, but not chromatic aberration. His studies on dielectrics led to important results: the Clausius-Mossotti formula is partly named after him, and his views on dielectric behaviour helped lead James Clerk Maxwell to devise his theory of the displacement current, which led in turn to the theoretical prediction of electromagnetic waves.