Evangelista Torricelli portrayed on the frontpage of Lezioni d'Evangelista Torricelli.

Evangelista Torricelli (Listen to the pronounciation (help·info)) (October 15, 1608 – October 25, 1647) was an Italian physicist and mathematician, best known for his invention of the barometer. Image File history File links Download high-resolution version (700x958, 333 KB) Frontispiece to Lezioni accademiche dEvangelista Torricelli. ... Image File history File links Download high-resolution version (700x958, 333 KB) Frontispiece to Lezioni accademiche dEvangelista Torricelli. ... is the 288th day of the year (289th in leap years) in the Gregorian calendar. ... Events March 18 - Sissinios formally crowned Emperor of Ethiopia May 14 - Protestant Union founded in Auhausen. ... is the 298th day of the year (299th in leap years) in the Gregorian calendar. ... 1647 (MDCXLVII) was a common year starting on Tuesday (see link for calendar) of the Gregorian calendar (or a common year starting on Friday of the 10-day slower Julian calendar). ... A magnet levitating above a high-temperature superconductor demonstrates the Meissner effect. ... For other meanings of mathematics or uses of math and maths, see Mathematics (disambiguation) and Math (disambiguation). ... A barometer is an instrument used to measure atmospheric pressure. ...

Biography

Torricelli was born in Faenza, then 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 in a Jesuit College in 1624 to study mathematics and philosophy until 1626, when he sent Toricelli to Rome in 1627 to study science under the Benedictine Benedetto Castelli, professor of mathematics at the Collegio della Sapienza in Pisa. Faenza is an old Italian cathedral town, situated 50 km southeast of Bologna. ... Coat of arms Map of the Papal States; the reddish area was annexed to the Kingdom of Italy in 1860, the rest (grey) in 1870. ... Camaldolese Priory on Bielany in Kraków, Poland The Camaldolese are part of the Benedictine family of monastic communities which follow the way of life outlined in the Rule of St. ... The Society of Jesus (Latin: Societas Iesu), commonly known as the Jesuits, is a Roman Catholic religious order. ... For other uses, see Rome (disambiguation). ... For the college, see Benedictine College. ... Benedetto Castelli, born Antonio Castelli (Brescia, 1578 – Rome, 1643), took the name Benedetto upon entering the Benedictine Order in 1595. ... For other meanings of mathematics or uses of math and maths, see Mathematics (disambiguation) and Math (disambiguation). ... For other uses, see Pisa (disambiguation). ...

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 practised 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.) Galileo can refer to: Galileo Galilei, astronomer, philosopher, and physicist (1564 - 1642) the Galileo spacecraft, a NASA space probe that visited Jupiter and its moons the Galileo positioning system Life of Galileo, a play by Bertolt Brecht Galileo (1975) - screen adaptation of the play Life of Galileo by Bertolt Brecht... This article is about the geographer, mathematician and astronomer Ptolemy. ... This article is about the astronomer. ... Kepler redirects here. ... Christian Sørensen Longomontanus (or Longberg) (October 4, 1562 – October 8, 1647), was a Danish astronomer. ... Copernicus redirects here. ...

Torricelli's statue in the Museo di Storia Naturale di Firenze.

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." Image File history File linksMetadata Download high-resolution version (1920x2560, 800 KB) File links The following pages on the English Wikipedia link to this file (pages on other projects are not listed): Evangelista Torricelli Metadata This file contains additional information, probably added from the digital camera or scanner used to... Image File history File linksMetadata Download high-resolution version (1920x2560, 800 KB) File links The following pages on the English Wikipedia link to this file (pages on other projects are not listed): Evangelista Torricelli Metadata This file contains additional information, probably added from the digital camera or scanner used to... The Torre del Gallo in Arcetri Arcetri is a region of Florence in the hills to the south of the city centre. ... Ferdinando II de Medici, Grand Duke of Tuscany (14 July 1610 – 23 May 1670) ruled as Grand Duke of Tuscany from 1621 to 1670. ... The University of Pisa (Italian Università di Pisa) is one of the most renowned Italian universities. ... Cycloid (red) generated by a rolling circle A cycloid is the curve defined by a fixed point on a wheel as it rolls, or, more precisely, the locus of a point on the rim of a circle rolling along a straight line. ...

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. For a similar disease with a similar name, see typhus. ... For other uses, see Asteroid (disambiguation). ...

Contributions to physics

Torricelli's chief invention was the 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, was named in his honor. This article is about the element. ... The torr (symbol: Torr) or millimeter of mercury (mmHg) is a non-SI unit of pressure. ... This article is about pressure in the physical sciences. ...

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. Torricellis Law states that the speed of a fluid flowing out of an opening under the force of gravity is proportional to the square root of the product of twice the acceleration of the gravity multiplied by the height h, the distance between the level of the surface and... Bernoullis Principle states that for an ideal fluid (low speed air is a good approximation), with no work being performed on the fluid, an increase in velocity occurs simultaneously with decrease in pressure or a change in the fluids gravitational potential energy. ...

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

• Torricelli's equation
• Torricelli's Law
• Torricelli/Fermat point
• Gabriel's horn

This equation was created by Evangelista Torricelli to find the final velocity of a moving object without having a known time interval and was named after him. ... Torricellis Law states that the speed of a fluid flowing out of an opening under the force of gravity is proportional to the square root of the product of twice the acceleration of the gravity multiplied by the height h, the distance between the level of the surface and... Construction for the fermat point. ... Gabriels Horn (also called Torricellis trumpet) is a figure invented by Evangelista Torricelli which has infinite surface area, but finite volume. ...

References

• Aubert, André; Bombieri and Goldfeld, eds. (1989). "Prehistory of the Zeta-Function", Number Theory, Trace Formulas and Discrete Groups. Academic Press. 
• de Gandt (1987). L'oeuvre de Torricelli. Les Belles Lettres.