- Roberto Mantovani
Roberto Mantovani (
March 25 1854 –January 10 1933 ), was an Italiangeologist andviolinist .Mantovani was born in
Parma . His father, Timoteo, died seven months after his birth. His mother, Luigia Ferrari, directed him to studies, and at the age of 11 he was accepted as a boarder in the Royal School of Music, where he was conferred with theHonorary Degree in August 1872. He always preferred the exact sciences and literature to music.In 1889 and 1909 Mantovani published a theory of an expanding earth and
continental drift . He assumed that a closed continent covered the entire surface of a smaller earth. Through volcanic activity because ofthermal expansion this continent broke, whereby the new continents were drifting away from each other because of further expansion of the rip-zones, where now the oceans lie. [Citation | author=Mantovani, R.| author-link =| title = Les fractures de l’écorce terrestre et la théorie de Laplace | journal= Bull. Soc. Sc. et Arts Réunion | pages=41-53| year=1889] [Citation | author=Mantovani, R.| title = L’Antarctide |journal= Je m’instruis. La science pour tous |volume=38 | pages=595-597| year=1909]Alfred Wegener saw similarities to his own theory, but did not support Mantovani's earth-expansion hypothesis. He wrote: [Citation | author=Wegener, A. | title = The Origin of Continents and Oceans | year=1929/1966 |publisher=Courier Dover Publications|ISBN=0486617084]He died in
Paris .References
External links
*Citation | author=Scalera, G. | contribution =Roberto Mantovani an Italian defender of the continental drift and planetary expansion | contribution-url=http://hdl.handle.net/2122/2017 | editor=Scalera, G. and Jacob, K.-H. |title =Why expanding Earth? – A book in honour of O.C. Hilgenberg | year=2003 | place=Rome | publisher= Istituto Nazionale di Geofisica e Vulcanologia |pages= 71-74
*Biography of Mantovani [in Italian] : http://www.brera.unimi.it/SISFA/atti/1996/scalera.html
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