Alessandro Giuseppe Antonio Anastasio Volta (; 18 February 1745 – 5 March 1827) was an
Italian physicist,
chemist, and a pioneer of
electricity and
power, who is credited as the inventor of the
electrical battery and the discoverer of
methane. He invented the
Voltaic pile in 1799 and the results of which he reported in 1800 in a two-part letter to the President of the
Royal Society. With this invention Volta proved that electricity could be generated chemically and debased the prevalent theory that electricity was generated solely by living beings. Volta's invention sparked a great amount of scientific excitement and led others to conduct similar experiments which eventually led to the development of the field of electrochemistry.