In biology, galvanism's the contraction of a muscle that's stimulated by an electric current. In physics and chemistry, it's the induction of electrical current from a chemical reaction, typically between two chemicals with differing electronegativites. History The effect was named by Alessandro Volta after his contemporary, the scientist Luigi Galvani, who investigated the effect of electricity on dissected animals in the 1780s and 1790s. Galvani himself referred to the phenomenon as animal ele… (More on Galvanism)