Giovanni Battista Beccaria (October 3, 1716 - May 27, 1781) was an Italian physicist. He entered the religious Order of the Pious Schools or Piarists, in 1732, where he studied, and afterward taught, grammar and rhetoric. He became professor of experimental physics, first at Palermo and then at Rome, and was appointed to a similar position at Turin in 1748. In 1755 he was elected a fellow of the Royal Society of London, and published several papers on electrical subjects. In 1759, King Charles Emmanuel III of Sardinia, who had invited him to Turin, employed him to measure the degree of meridian arc in Piedmont. Beccaria did much, in the way both of experiment and exposition, to spread a knowledge of the electrical researches of Benjamin Franklin and others. His principal work was the treatise Dell' Elettricismo Naturale ed Artificiale (1753), which was translated into English in 1776. He died in 1781 at the age of 64. This image has been color enhanced.