Giovanni Aldini

It’s the birthday of Giovanni Aldini, who was born in 1762 in Bologna, Italy. Aldini followed his uncle, Luigi Galvini, in becoming a physicist who specialized in the effects of electricity on biological tissue. Aldini’s best-known experiment was a gruesome one. On 18 January 1803, convicted murderer George Foster was hanged at London’s Newgate Prison. The corpse was handed over to Aldini, who attached electrodes to it. A witness recounted: “On the first application of the process to the face, the jaws of the deceased criminal began to quiver, and the adjoining muscles were horribly contorted, and one eye was actually opened. In the subsequent part of the process the right hand was raised and clenched, and the legs and thighs were set in motion.” Although Mary Shelley was just 5 years old when Foster was executed, it’s likely that Aldni was the inspiration for her famous fictional character Victor Frankenstein.

Date in History: 10 April 1762