| Giuseppe Mercalli |
Giuseppe Mercalli Giuseppe Mercalli, an Italian volcanologist, was born on May 21, 1850, in the Italian city of Milan. He studied at the Higher Technical Institute of Milano and was ordained as a Roman Catholic priest in 1872. He worked as a teacher in Monza and several private schools in Milano, and later went on to become a professor of the Natural Sciences at the seminary of Milan. He was removed from this professorship when he was suspected of liberalism for openly supporting a national monument to honor the philosopher-priest Antonio Rosmia. Subsequently, he was appointed by the Italian government to be a professor at Domodossia. This was was followed by a post in the Liceo Campanella in Reggio Calabria in 1889, a post at the University of Catania in 1891, and finally a post at the Liceo Vittorio Emannuelle in Naples in 1892. In 1911 he became the director of the Vesuvius Observatory, and remained in that position until the time of his death. In 1902 Giuseppe Mercalli developed the 12 step Mercalli Scale as an improvement to the 10 step Rossi-Forel Scale developed in 1883 by M. S. de Rossi and F. A. Forel. The Mercalli Scale is expressed as Roman numerals from I to XII, and is used to quantify the intensity and severity of an earthquake by the observed ground motion and/or damage it causes. This differs from form the more commonly known Richter Scale, which quantifies the magnitude of the energy released by an earthquake. A Mercalli Level I earthquake causes no damage and is felt by few, while a Mercalli Level XII earthquake causes nearly total catastrophic destruction. Further improvements to the Mercalli Scale were made by A. Sieberg in 1923, Harry Wood and Frank Neumann in 1931, and Charles Richter in 1956. These are now referred to as “Modified Mercalli Scales”. The initials “MM” (for Modified Mercalli) are often used before the level number. Giuseppe Mercalli died on the morning of March 19, 1914, allegedly burning to death after knocking over a paraffin lamp in his bedroom. He is thought to have been working through the night, as he often did 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. However a few days after his death, authorities stated that the professor was quite possibly murdered, as it was discovered that a sum of money worth approximately $1400 at the time was missing from his apartment, and hypothesized that he could have been strangled, soaked in petrol, and burned in order to conceal the crime.
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