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Geminiano Montanari (1 June 1633 – 13 October 1687) was an Italian astronomer, lens-maker, and proponent of the experimental approach to science. He was a member of various learned academies, notably the Accademia dei Gelati. Montanari's famous students include Domenico Guglielmini, Francesco Bianchini, Gianantonio Davia and Luigi Ferdinando Marsili.

Geminiano Montanari
Born(1633-06-01)1 June 1633
Modena, Duchy of Modena and Reggio
Died13 October 1687(1687-10-13) (aged 54)
Padua, Republic of Venice
NationalityItalian
Alma materUniversity of Salzburg
Known forDiscovery of the variations in brightness of Algol
Scientific career
Fields
  • astronomy
  • mathematics
  • physics
  • economics
Institutions
  • University of Bologna
  • University of Padua
Notable students
Influences
InfluencedCassini

He is best known for his observation, made around 1667, that the second-brightest star (called Algol as derived from its name in Arabic) in the constellation of Perseus varied in brightness. It is likely that others had observed this effect before, but Montanari was the first named astronomer to record it. The star's names in Arabic, Hebrew and other languages, all of which have a meaning of "ghoul" or "demon", imply that its unusual behaviour had long been recognised.


Biography


Montanari was born in Modena on June 1, 1633. The son of Giovanni Montanari and Margherita Zanasi, he was left fatherless at age ten. Montanari began his studies in Modena. At twenty he went to Florence to study law; he remained there for 3 years. In Florence he participated in the observations of the phases of Saturn made after the publication of Huygens' Systema Saturnium. In 1656 Montanari left Florence and moved to Salzburg, Austria, where he took a law degree in the same year. Thanks to the influence of Paolo del Buono, one of Galileo's last direct disciples and Florentine diplomat at the imperial court, he pursued the mathematical studies begun in Modena at the age of thirteen.

At the beginning of 1661 Montanari became court philosopher and mathematician in Modena. In the meantime the Modenese scientist had made acquaintance with Marquis Cornelio Malvasia, an influential senator and patron of science of Bologna who had built in his country house near Modena an astronomical observatory. Montanari helped Malvasia to complete his Ephemerides (Modena, 1662) and, after the death of Alfonso d'Este in July 1662, he left the court of Modena and pursued his astronomical studies and observations thanks to the patronage of the marquis. Malvasia also managed to get his protégé a chair of mathematics at the University of Bologna, to which Montanari was appointed by the Senate in December 1664. Montanari lectured in the afternoon chair while the Bolognese Pietro Mengoli, a renowned disciple of Cavalieri and a parish priest, occupied the morning chair. A third mathematical lectureship was held by Giovanni Domenico Cassini, a close friend of Montanari's.

In Bologna Montanari drew an accurate map of the Moon using an ocular micrometer of his own making. He also made observations on capillarity and other problems in statics, and suggested that the viscosity of a liquid depended on the shape of its molecules. In 1665 Montanari organized the Accademia della Traccia, the precursor to the Accademia degli Inquieti and the Academy of Sciences of the Institute of Bologna. The academy was established the year after Montanari's call to the University, and in the first two years of activity it met at the house of a Bolognese patrician, the Abbot Carlo Antonio Sampieri. From about 1667-1668 to 1677, the meetings were held at Montanari's home. Montanari was a keen astronomical observer, as demonstrated by the observations he made of the meteor that crossed the sky of central Italy on 21 March 1676 or those of the comet of 1682, the same observed by Edmond Halley. Montanari's observations of the great comet of 1680 are mentioned twice in the third volume of Newton's Principia.[1] Montanari published several tracts intended to discredit astrological prognostication. In 1675, he perpetrated a deliberate hoax by writing an astrological almanac entirely at random, to show that predictions made by chance were as likely to be fulfilled as those made by astrology. In the period shortly after Galileo Galilei, experimentalists like Montanari were engaged in a battle against the more mystical views of scientists such as Donato Rossetti, a pupil of Borelli. Montanari, on the contrary, drew a clear line of metaphysical neutrality, based on a sharp distinction between metaphysics and natural philosophy.[2]

In July 1678 Montanari was appointed to the new Paduan chair of astronomy and meteorology.[3] Almost all records of this period of his life have been lost. A letter survives from 1682 recording a sighting of Halley's Comet. He also wrote on economics, observing that demand for a particular commodity was fixed, and making comments on coinage and the value of money (1683).

Montanari was a close friend of the architect Guarino Guarini. In 1678 Guarini helped organize Montanari's debate with the latter's archenemy Donato Rossetti in Turin.[4]

A crater on the Moon, at 45.8S, 20.6W, is named after him.


Publications


Prostasi fisicomatematica, 1669
Prostasi fisicomatematica, 1669
Pensieri fisico-matematici intorno diversi effetti de' liquidi in cannuccie di vetro e altri vasi, 1667
Pensieri fisico-matematici intorno diversi effetti de' liquidi in cannuccie di vetro e altri vasi, 1667

References


  1. Isaac Newton, The Principia: Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy, edited by Bernard I. Cohen and Anne Whitman, Berkeley, University of California Press, 1999, pp. 913-915, 927.
  2. Vanzo 2016.
  3. "Montanari, Geminiano". The Galileo Project. Rice University. Retrieved 8 August 2018.
  4. Klaiber, Susan Elizabeth (1993). Guarino Guarini's Theatine Architecture. Vol. 1. Columbia University. p. 8.

Further reading





На других языках

[de] Geminiano Montanari

Geminiano Montanari (* 1. Juni 1633 in Modena; † 13. Oktober 1687) war ein italienischer Astronom, Mathematiker, Linsenschleifer und Befürworter des experimentellen Ansatzes in der Wissenschaft.
- [en] Geminiano Montanari

[es] Geminiano Montanari

Geminiano Montanari (1 de junio de 1633 – 13 de octubre de 1687) fue un astrónomo italiano, fabricante de lentes, y defensor de la aproximación experimental a la ciencia. Fue el primer astrónomo en dejar constancia del brillo variable de la estrella Algol.

[fr] Geminiano Montanari

Geminiano Montanari (né le 1er juin 1633 à Modène et mort le 13 octobre 1687 à Padoue) est un astronome et un fabricant de lentilles italien, partisan de l'approche expérimentale des sciences. Geminiano Montanari est surtout connu pour son observation, faite autour de 1667, que la deuxième étoile la plus brillante (appelée Algol en arabe) de la constellation de Persée avait une luminosité variable[1].

[it] Geminiano Montanari

Geminiano Montanari (Modena, 1º giugno 1633 – Padova, 13 ottobre 1687) è stato un astronomo e matematico italiano.

[ru] Монтанари, Джеминиано

Джеминиа́но Монтана́ри (итал. Geminiano Montanari, 1 июня 1633, Модена — 13 октября 1687, Падуя) — итальянский астроном и оптик, профессор математики в Болонье и Падуе. Наиболее известен тем, что около 1669 года обнаружил изменения блеска звезды Алголь (β Персея), тем самым он одним из первых открыл для науки класс переменных звёзд (ранее, в 1596 году, Фабрициус отметил, что переменная звезда Мира утратила видимость, и ошибочно принял её за новую звезду).


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