Emanuele Fergola

Emanuele Fergola was an Italian astronomer and mathematician, born in Naples on 30 October 1830 and died there on 5 April 1915, who also served as a Senator of the Kingdom of Italy. The son of a Bourbon general, he came from a family with a strong cultural tradition, which included the founder of the Neapolitan school of geometry. In 1849 Ernesto Capocci took him as a pupil at the Capodimonte Astronomical Observatory, where he spent his whole scientific life. He lectured at the Military College of the Nunziatella from 1855 to 1860, taught at the University of Naples from 1860, became full professor of higher analysis, and in 1889 became professor of astronomy, director of Capodimonte and, for three years, Rector of the University. His early work was in pure mathematics; from 1864 he published astronomical work, including a telegraph measurement of the longitude difference between Naples and Rome with Angelo Secchi in 1869 and, from 1893, simultaneous observations with the Columbia College observatory in New York that gave a new value for the aberration constant.