Giovanni Aldini

(1762 - 1834)

Born in Bologna, the doctor and physicist Giovanni Aldini would watch his uncle Luigi Galvani perform experiments on dead frogs as a child, observing as the amphibians twitched when touched with an electric spark. Aldini spent his career working on the same subject, most famously at Newgate Prison in London, where he applied electricity to a recently hanged man named George Foster; crowds looked on as his body moved, potentially inspiring Mary Shelley’s depiction of Victor Frankenstein and his monster.