Christian Doppler’s tomb is located in the Cemetery of the Venetian Island of San Michele, between Venice lagoon and Murano Island. The tombstone is on a wall under the colonnade of the first building on the left of the entrance. Dr. Peter M. Shuster (an Austrian mathematician and physicist) was the first man who located the tomb in the Cemetery and to this event he dedicated some pages of his book.
It is a simple marble gravestone with a bronze medallion representing the scientist’s profile. In the lower side of the gravestone there is a curious detail: a diapason that symbolizes and summarises, in the best way, his theory based on vibrations, transmissions and interferences of sound waves.
The Italian inscription of the tomb states: “A CRISTIANO DOPPLER/ ACCADEMICO E FISICO MATEMATICO IN VIENNA / MORTO IN VENEZIA DI XLIX ANNI / PER DOMESTICHE E SOCIALI VIRTU / A PARTENTI ED AMICI / CARISSIMO / PER SCIENZA E DOTTRINA / NEGLI ARCANI DELLA NATURA / PROFONDO / I FISICI DELLA VENEZIA / FECERO AFFETTUOSI E RIVERENTI / QUESTA MEMORIA / MDCCCLIII”.
- Photos and main text by Mario Di Diego ti.orebil|ogeidid_oiram#| and Noemi Morelli ti.oiligriv|illerom.imeon#| (November 2014)
- Locate the item on this Google Map
Bibliography
- Giovan Battista Contarini, Menzioni onorifiche de’defunti scritte nel nostro secolo, All’Ancora, Venice 1854, pp. 27-28.
- Edward Hiebl and Maurizio Musso, Christian Doppler life and work- Principles and application, Living Edition, Pöllauberg (Austria) 2007, p.59