Luigi Galvani
Galvani, Luigi (1737–1798), an Italian physician and anatomist. About 1780 he discovered current electricity. He suspended a dissected frog's leg on copper hooks over an iron railing and noted that the leg muscles twitched convulsively. Galvani correctly attributed the twitchings to an electrical current, but he thought that the current originated in the leg nerves and called it “animal electricity.” Alessandro Volta soon after showed that the frog's leg was only a conductor and that the current was produced by the two metals.
Galvani was born in Bologna, Italy. He became a lecturer on anatomy at the University of Bologna in 1762 and a professor in 1766. The galvanizing process of coating metal and the galvanometer, which measures electric current, are named for him.