HISTORY OF THE MUSEUM

The University of Cagliari began its activities in the year 1626, in the reign of Philip III of Spain.Four groups of chairs were activated:Theology, Law, Medicine and Philosophy.The chair of Physics was one of the three in the philosophy group and was entrusted to the Jesuit Fathers.The University laboured on through the Spanish domination of Sardinia and the first part of the Savoy domination, which began in 1720 with the Treaty of the Hague.

It was Charles Emmanuel III, king of Sardinia who, starting from 1755, began a wide-reaching work of reorganization and expansion, which led to the official inauguration of the renewed university on 3 November 1764.

In the new university the Chair of Experimental Physics was instituted and entrusted to Father Giovanni Antonio Cossu of the Order of the Servants of Mary, a Sardinian who lectured in Philosophy in Bologna.As a first endowment of the Physics Laboratory, from Turin it received a first group of apparatuses and instruments contained in eight crates.

Of this first group, the Museum now has only four of certain provenance; many others probably belong to this first shipment, but studies are still underway to ascertain this.