Adolfo Bartoli and the Young Einstein: Physics at Pavia University in 1895

Einstein’s youth in Pavia has already received a great deal of attention from historians of science, especially in relation to the Einstein & Garrone firm and factory. Also well known is the Pavia essay that Albert wrote in 1895, when he spent many months in Pavia, without attending school, privately preparing the entrance examinations to the ETH in Zurich. Strangely enough no consideration has been given, as far as I know, to the Pavia University milieu, to its wellequipped physical cabinet and to its rich library, both only about eight hundred metres from Einstein’s home in via Foscolo. Given the emphasis Einstein placed on radiation pressure in his 1905 papers, it would appear important to recall that in Pavia in 1895 Adolfo Bartoli (1851-96) held the physics chair dating back to Volta. Bartoli was well known for his original thermodynamic derivation of radiation pressure through a thought experiment (1876, 1884), and for his acknowledged influence on Boltzmann, Wien and Lebedew.