Evangelista Torricelli was first educated in Jesuit schools in his native Faenza, near Ravenna. His abilities as a physicist and mathematician were so great that he was sent to Rome for further education under the direction of Benedetto Castelli (1578-1643), a student of. Through Castelli, Torricelli was introduced to the aging Galileo, and he became Galileo's secretary and assistant for the last few months of Galileo's life. After Galileo's death in January 1642, the Grand Duke of Tuscany offered Torricelli Galileo's old position as court mathematician and philosopher. Torricelli held this position until his death from a sudden fever shortly before reaching his 40th birthday.

As a scientist Torricelli became well known for his study of the motion of fluids and was declared the father of hydrodynamics by Ernst Mach. Torricelli also conducted experiments on what we now call gases, though the term was not then in use. This...