Galileo Ferraris

Galileo Ferraris (1847 to 1897) was an Italian university professor, physicist and electrical engineer, one of the pioneers of alternating current power systems and the inventor of the induction motor, although he never patented his work. Born at Livorno Vercellese in the Kingdom of Sardinia, he researched the rotary magnetic field independently in 1885 and experimented with different types of asynchronous electric motors, which also led him to an alternator. He published his research in a paper to the Royal Academy of Sciences in Turin on 11 March 1888, two months before Nikola Tesla gained his United States patent. In 1889 he worked at the Italian Industrial Institution in Turin, and in 1896 he became the first national president of the Italian Electrotechnical Association. He also researched dioptric instruments. A Ferraris disk motor is named after him, and the IEEE honoured his work on rotating fields and early induction motors with a Milestone in 2021.