fl. early 1600s

Italian alchemist who created the first synthetically luminiscent material (c. 1603). A cobbler by profession in Bologna, Cascariolo heated a mixture of barium sulfide with coal and found that the powder thereby obtained exhibited a temporary bluish glow at night that could be restored by exposure to sunlight. The material was called lapis solaris or sunstone because it was hoped it could be used for transforming base metals into gold (the symbol for gold being the Sun).