# Antonio de Ulloa

Antonio de Ulloa y de la Torre-Guiral (12 January 1716 – 3 July 1795) was a Spanish Navy officer. He spent much of his career in the Americas, where he carried out important scientific work. He also served the Spanish Empire as an administrator in the Viceroyalty of Peru and in Spanish Louisiana.
At the age of nineteen, Ulloa joined the French Geodesic Mission to the Equator, which established that the shape of the Earth is an oblate spheroid, flattened at the poles, as predicted by Isaac Newton. The mission took more than eight years to complete its work, during which time Ulloa, in close collaboration with his fellow naval officer Jorge Juan, made many astronomical, natural, and social observations in South America. Ulloa and Juan also helped to organize the defense of the Peruvian coast against the English squadron of Commodore Anson, after the outbreak of the War of Jenkins' Ear in 1739.
The reports of Ulloa's scientific findings during his time in South America earned him an international reputation. Notably, Ulloa published the first detailed observations of the metal platinum, later identified as a new chemical element. Ulloa returned to Europe in 1745. He was elected as a fellow of the Royal Society of London in 1746, and as a foreign member of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences in 1751.
From 1758 to 1764, Ulloa served as governor of Huancavelica, in Peru, and as superintendent of the mercury mines of the region. There he fought unsuccessfully against the corruption of the local administration. Following the Seven Years' War, Ulloa became the first governor of Spanish Louisiana in 1766. His rule was strongly resisted by the French Creoles of New Orleans, who expelled him from the city during the Rebellion of 1768. Ulloa continued to serve in the Spanish Navy, achieving the rank of vice admiral and becoming its chief of operations.

## Life
### Family background and education

Antonio de Ulloa was born in Seville, Spain, into a socially prominent and intellectually distinguished family. His father, Bernardo de Ulloa y Sousa, was noted for his writings on economics. His brother Fernando would become an engineer and the chief of works of the Canal de Castilla. Another brother, Martín, became a jurist, historian, and member of the Royal Spanish Academy.
Destined for a naval career, at the age of thirteen Antonio embarked in Cádiz on the galleon San Luis, bound for the port of Cartagena de Indias (in present-day Colombia). After returning to Cádiz, Antonio entered the Real Compañía de Guardias Marinas (the Spanish Naval Academy) in 1733.

### South American expedition

At that time the French Academy of Sciences was organizing a major scientific expedition to Quito, in present-day Ecuador, in order to measure the length of a degree of meridian arc (i.e., latitude) at the equator. This was part of an effort to determine in the precise figure of the Earth in order to settle the scientific debate between the defenders of René Descartes's physics and those who advocated the newer Newtonian mechanics. In 1735, Ulloa and another young naval officer, Jorge Juan, were appointed by the Spanish Crown to accompany the French Geodesic Mission to Quito. This was a sensitive assignment, both politically and scientifically.
The early work of the French Geodesic Mission, led by Charles Marie de La Condamine, was delayed and hindered by lack of cooperation from the local Spanish authorities. Indeed, in 1737 a personal dispute between Ulloa and the president of the Real Audiencia de Quito, Joseph de Araujo y Río, reached such a pitch that Araujo ordered the arrest of Ulloa and Juan, announcing his intention to have them killed. Juan and Ulloa took refuge in a church and Ulloa then escaped through the cordon of Araujo's men, reaching Lima and obtaining the protection of the Viceroy of Peru, the Marquis of Villagarcía. When war between Spain and Great Britain broke out in 1739, Juan and Ulloa, as naval officers, actively participated in the defense of Peru.
Ulloa traveled throughout the territories of the Viceroyalty of Peru from 1736 to 1744, making many astronomic, natural, and social observations. In one of his reports he described, for the first time in the European scientific literature, some of the properties of a metal that he called platina ("little silver") and which he encountered during his inspection the gold panning operations in the Chocó region of what is now Colombia. This metal would later be identified as a new chemical element, now known as platinum. Ulloa is therefore often credited as the discoverer of platinum.
Both Ulloa and another member of the French Geodesic Mission, Pierre Bouguer, reported that while walking near the summit of Mount Pambamarca they saw their shadows projected on a lower-lying cloud, with a circular "halo or glory" around the shadow of the observer's head. Ulloa noted that
   The most surprising thing was that, of the six or seven people that were present, each one saw the phenomenon only around the shadow of his own head, and saw nothing around other people’s heads.
This has been called "Ulloa's halo" or "Bouguer's halo". It is similar to the phenomenon that later came be known as the "Brocken spectre" after the Brocken, the highest peak in the Harz mountains in central Germany. Ulloa reported that the glories were surrounded by a larger ring of white light, which would today be called a fog bow. On other occasions, he observed arches of white light formed by reflected moonlight, whose explanation is unknown but which may have been related to ice-crystal halos.
The final results of French Geodesic Mission, published by La Condamine in 1745, combined with the measurements of meridian arc near the Arctic Circle that had been published in 1738 by Pierre Louis Maupertuis following the French Geodesic Mission to Lapland, decisively vindicated the predictions first made by Isaac Newton in Book III of his Principia Mathematica of 1687. These results greatly contributed to the triumph of Newtonianism over Cartesianism among Continental European savants. The determination of the precise figure of the Earth was also regarded as being of practical importance for navigation.

### Return to Spain

In 1745, having finished their scientific labours, Ulloa and Jorge Juan prepared to return to Spain, agreeing to travel on different ships in order to minimize the danger of losing their important samples and records. The ship upon which Ulloa was travelling was captured by the British Royal Navy, and he was taken to England as a prisoner of war. There, he was soon befriended by leading British scientists, and was elected as a fellow of the Royal Society in December 1746. Thanks in part to the intervention of Martin Folkes, the president of the Royal Society, Ulloa was released from British custody and allowed to return to Spain.
In 1749, Ulloa published his Relación histórica del viaje a la América Meridional (Madrid, 1748), which contains a full, accurate, and clear description of the greater part of South America geographically, and of its inhabitants and natural history. It was translated into English and published in 1758 as A Voyage to South America (1758).
Shortly after their return to Spain, Juan and Ulloa penned a confidential report to their political patron, the Marquess of Ensenada, on the state of the defenses and administration of the Spanish domains in South America. The document is highly critical of the corruption of both the civil authorities and the Catholic clergy, including their exploitation of the Native American population. That report remained unpublished during the lifetimes of its authors. It only became public in 1826, after the independence of South America from Spain, when it was published in London by an Englishman named David Barry, who had himself returned disillusioned from the newly independent Spanish America.
Ulloa gained an international scientific reputation and was appointed to serve on various important scientific commissions. With Jorge Juan, he is credited with the establishment of the first museum of natural history, the first metallurgical laboratory in Spain, and the astronomical observatory of Cádiz. In 1751, Ulloa was elected as a foreign member of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences. In 1757 King Ferdinand VI appointed Ulloa as Commander of Ocaña (Comendador de Ocaña) in the Order of Santiago.

### Imperial administrator

Ulloa returned to South America in 1758 as governor of Huancavelica, in Peru, and general manager of the mercury mines in the region. At the time, mercury was of great practical importance because of its use in the extraction of silver and gold (see pan amalgamation). Ulloa fought unsuccessfully against the deep-rooted corruption in the local administration and finally requested to be relieved of his post in 1764.
Following Britain's victory of the French and Spanish in the Seven Years' War, France agreed in the 1762 Treaty of Fontainebleau to cede to Spain its colony of Louisiana. The Spanish Crown then appointed Ulloa as the first governor of Spanish Louisiana. Ulloa reached New Orleans, the major city and port of the region, on 5 March 1766. The French Creole colonists refused to recognize Spanish rule, leading to the Louisiana Rebellion of 1768. On 28 October, as riots broke out in New Orleans, the governor and his pregnant wife were taken to a Spanish vessel. The Superior Council voted that the governor leave within three days. He complied, departing on 1 November. The revolt was ultimately crushed in 1769 by forces under the command of the new Spanish governor, Alejandro O'Reilly, who succeeded in establishing definitively the control of the region by the Spanish Crown.
In 1768, while serving in New Orleans as governor of Spanish Louisiana, Ulloa married a woman from the high society of Lima, Francisca Melchora Rosa Remírez de Laredo y Encalada, daughter of the Count of San Javier y Casa Laredo. The couple had six children, among them Francisco Javier de Ulloa who became the Spanish Minister of Marine and the 22nd Captain general of the Navy.
After 1776, Ulloa enjoyed the political support of José de Gálvez, the new Minister of the Indies. Between 1776 and 1778, in the context of the Spanish support for the rebellion in North America against British rule, Ulloa helped organize a war fleet in New Spain (present-day Mexico). He also advised the Viceroy Antonio María de Bucareli on the proposed construction of a military shipyard in the Atlantic port of Veracruz.

### Later years

In 1778, Ulloa commanded the last great treasure fleet that sailed between Cádiz and Veracruz. During the return voyage, he observed the total solar eclipse of 1778, a subject on which he corresponded with the French astronomer Pierre Charles Le Monnier. Ulloa later published his observations of the eclipse in a book printed in Madrid and, in abbreviated form, in an article in the Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society. In 1779, King Charles III promoted Ulloa to teniente general de la Armada ("lieutenant general of the Navy", equivalent to the modern rank of vice admiral).
As part of the Spanish campaign against Great Britain during the American Revolution, Ulloa was commanded to sail to the Azores, where he was to protect Spanish vessels and attack British merchant ships passing through the area. Ulloa's fleet met with little success in that mission and he left for Spain ten days earlier than instructed, due to lack to supplies and the poor condition of some of his ships. After Ulloa arrived in Cádiz in October of 1779, he was ordered to help prevent the British navy from relieving the British garrison during the Siege of Gibraltar. After judging that the ships under his command could not endure the prevailing weather conditions, he asked to be relieved of responsibility for that mission.
The previous events in the Azores led to formal charges of dereliction of duty against Ulloa and two captains under his command, Pedro de Leyba and Manuel Núñez Gaona. The drawn-out proceedings ended with their definitive acquittal by the Consejo Supremo de Guerra (the supreme court of military justice for the Spanish Empire, presided by King Charles III) in February of 1782. Ulloa was later appointed as chief of operations of the Navy, a position that he occupied until his death in 1795.

## Legacy

As a scientist, Ulloa is remembered principally for his role in the determination of the figure of the Earth and for his pioneering reports on platinum. Some historians of science consider him as the first discoverer or platinum, even though Ulloa himself did not identify the metal as a new chemical element. He is also credited with for his reports of "Ulloa's halo" and other related optical and meteorological phenomena.
The confidential report to the Marquess of Ensenada, signed jointly by Jorge Juan and Antonio de Ulloa and written around 1746, remained unknown to the public until it was published in London in 1826 by an Englishman named David Barry, under the title Noticias secretas de América ("Secret News from America"). Barry had spent some time in the newly independent Spanish America seeking opportunities for investment, only to become thoroughly disillusioned about the prospects for the region. The Noticias secretas paints a dire picture of the state of the administration of the Spanish dominions in America in the 1730s and 1740s, alleging many instances of official corruption and mismanagement by both the civil and the ecclesiastical authorities, and denouncing the exploitation of the Native American population by unscrupulous governors and priests. As such, it has caused enduring controversy among historians of Spanish America.

## Tributes

* In 2016, Spain issued a stamp to makr the 300th anniversary of the birth of Antonio de Ulloa.
* In 2013 the University of Seville created a CRAI - Library named after him.
* A street in the Sunset District of San Francisco is named after him.