Quirico Filopanti
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Giuseppe Barilli, also known under his pseudonym Quirico Filopanti, was an Italian mathematician and politician.
[edit] Biography
He was born in Budrio, near Bologna, on April 20, 1812. He graduated in 1834 in mathematics and became professor of mechanics and hydraulics in 1848.
He was actively committed into the political affairs of Italian Risorgimento and took part in 1849 in the establishing of the Repubblica Romana. He was appointed secretary of the Assemblea Costituente (constituent assembly) and was the author of the “Decreto Fondamentale” (Fundamental decree) through which on February, the 9th the temporal government of the Pope was declared as forfeited and the Republic was proclaimed.
After the fall of the Republic he found shelter in the United States and afterwards in London. Even after the birth of the Kingdom of Italy and his comeback to his country he had to leave his appointment as teacher of Mechanics at the University of Bologna since he repeatedly refused to take his oath of allegiance to the monarchy. In 1876 he was elected as a member of the Parliament for the Republican party. He died poor in Bologna in 1894.
In his work Miranda in 1858 he develops the idea of time zones. Filopanti's hypothesis was to ideally split up the earth into 24 areas (zones) along the lines of the meridians, each of which should have his own time. Each time zone should differ from its following by one hour, whereas minutes and seconds should coincide. The first time zone should be centred on Rome's meridian. The splitting into time zones should establish the local time (L). His hypothesis provided also with the establishing of a universal time (U) that should be used as only datum line in astronomy and telegraph communications.
