Ernesto Capocci

Ernesto Capocci Belmonte (Picinisco, 31 March 1798 – Naples, 6 January 1864) was an Italian mathematician, astronomer and politician.

From 1815 he was a pupil at the Astronomical Observatory of Naples directed by his uncle Federigo Zuccari. In 1819 he was appointed as assistant astronomer by Giuseppe Piazzi at the new observatory in Capodimonte directed by Carlo Brioschi. In 1833 the king of Naples Ferdinand II appointed him director of the Observatory, but in 1850 he was ousted for having participated with his children in the uprisings of 1848 and for being a supporter of liberal and Risorgimento ideas. He was reinstated in functions by Giuseppe Garibaldi in 1860. dedicated to the astronomer and published anastatic reprints of some of his popular texts.

In Paris he frequented François Arago and Alexander von Humboldt, prompted Macedonio Melloni to come and live in Naples to direct the Meteorological Observatory on Vesuvius.

He died in 1864 and was buried in the Poggioreale cemetery in Naples. His tomb, embellished with a bust made by Vincenzo Gemito later exhibited in the Capodimonte Observatory Museum, was inaugurated in November 1900 with a speech given by Pasquale Del Pezzo and published in 2015.

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