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 Evangelista Torricelli portrayed onthe frontpage of Lezioni d'Evangelista Torricelli | |
| Born | October 15, 1608 Faenza, Romagna, Italy |
| Died | October 25, 1647 (aged 39) Florence |
| Nationality | Italian |
| Known for | Barometer Torricelli's Law |
| Scientific career | |
| Fields | Physicist Mathematician |
Evangelista Torricelli (pronunciation; October 15, 1608 – October 25, 1647) was an Italian physicist and mathematician, best known for his invention of the barometer.
Biography
Evangelista Torricelli was born in Faenza, part of the Papal States. He was left fatherless at an early age and educated under the care of his uncle, a Camaldolese monk, who first entered young Torricelli into a Jesuit College in 1624 to study mathematics and philosophy until 1626, when he sent Torricelli to Rome in 1627 to study science under the Benedictine Benedetto Castelli, professor of mathematics at the Collegio della Sapienza in Pisa.
In 1632, shortly after the publication of Galileo's Dialogues of the New Science, Torricelli wrote to Galileo of reading it "with the delight of one who, having already practiced all of geometry most diligently and having studied Ptolemy and seen almost everything of Tycho Brahe, Kepler and Longomontanus, finally, forced by the many congruences, came to adhere to Copernicus, and was a Galileian in profession and sect". (The Vatican condemned Galileo in June 1633, and this was the only known occasion on which Torricelli openly declared himself to hold the Copernican view.)
Aside from several letters, little is known of Torricelli's activities in the years between 1632 and 1641, when Castelli sent Torricelli's monograph of the path of projectiles to Galileo, then a prisoner in his villa at Arcetri. Although Galileo promptly invited Torricelli to visit, he did not accept until just three months before Galileo's death. During his stay, however, he wrote out Galileo's Discourse of the Fifth day. After Galileo's death on January 8, 1642, Grand Duke Ferdinando II de' Medici asked him to succeed Galileo as the grand-ducal mathematician and professor of mathematics in the University of Pisa. In this role he solved some of the great mathematical problems of the day, such as finding a cycloid's area and center of gravity. He also designed and built a number of telescopes and simple microscopes; several large lenses, engraved with his name, are still preserved at Florence. In 1644, he famously wrote in a letter: "We live submerged at the bottom of an ocean of air."
Torricelli died in Florence a few days after having contracted typhoid fever, and was buried in San Lorenzo. The asteroid 7437 Torricelli was named in his honor.
Contributions to physics
Barometer
Torricelli's chief invention was the mercurial barometer, which arose from solving an important practical problem. Pumpmakers of the Grand Duke of Tuscany attempted to raise water to a height of 12 meters or more, but found that 10 meters was the limit to which it would rise in the suction pump. Torricelli thought to employ mercury, fourteen times as heavy as water. In 1643 he created a tube c. 1 meter long, sealed at the top end, filled it with mercury, and set it vertically into a basin of mercury. The column of mercury fell to about 76cm, leaving a Torricellian vacuum above. As we now know, the column's height fluctuated with changing atmospheric pressure; this was the first barometer. This discovery has perpetuated his fame, and the Torr, a unit of pressure commonly used in vacuum measurements, was named in his honor.
Torricelli's Law
Torricelli also discovered Torricelli's Law, regarding the speed of a fluid flowing out of an opening, which was later shown to be a particular case of Bernoulli's principle.
Cause of wind
Torricelli gave the first scientific description of the cause of wind:
... winds are produced by differences of air temperature, and hence density, between two regions of the earth.
Italian Submarines
Several Italian Navy submarines were named after Evangelista Torricelli
- A Micca class submarine, built in 1918, stricken in 1930
- An Archimede' class submarine (1934), transferred to Spain in 1937 and renamed General Mola, striken in 1959
- A 'Benedetto Brin class submarine (1937), sunk in the Red Sea by the British Navy in 1940
- Evangelista Torricelli , the former USS Lizardfish , transferred to Italy in 1960 and decommisssioned in 1976
Selected works
His manuscripts are preserved at Florence, Italy. The following have appeared in print:
- Trattato del moto (before 1641)
- Opera geometrica (1644)
- Lezioni accademiche (printed 1715)
- Esperienza dell'argento vivo (Berlin, 1897).
See also
References
- Aubert, André (1989). "Prehistory of the Zeta-Function". Number Theory, Trace Formulas and Discrete Groups. Academic Press.
{{cite book}}: Unknown parameter|coauthors=ignored (|author=suggested) (help) - de Gandt (1987). L'oeuvre de Torricelli. Les Belles Lettres.
- Shampo, M A (1986). "Italian physicist-mathematician invents the barometer". Mayo Clin. Proc. 61 (3): 204. PMID 3511332.
{{cite journal}}: Cite has empty unknown parameters:|laydate=,|laysummary=, and|laysource=(help); Unknown parameter|coauthors=ignored (|author=suggested) (help); Unknown parameter|month=ignored (help) - O'Connor, John J.; Robertson, Edmund F., "Evangelista Torricelli", MacTutor History of Mathematics Archive, University of St Andrews