Adolfo Bartoli

Adolfo Bartoli (19 March 1851 – 18 July 1896) was an Italian physicist, who is best known for introducing the concept of radiation pressure from thermodynamical considerations.

In 1874 James Clerk Maxwell found out that the existence of tensions in the ether, in other words radiation pressure, follows from his electromagnetic theory.

Later the radiation pressure played an important role in the work of Albert Einstein in connection with mass–energy equivalence and the photoelectric effect.

Einstein lived in Pavia at that time (1895), when Bartoli held the Physics chair at the local University.

Consider a perfectly reflexive piston with a mirror in the middle, and two black bodies connected to two heat baths at its two ends.