1608-1647

Italian mathematician and physicist best known for inventing the mercury barometer (1644). Torricelli made significant contributions to the development of calculus—a subject he possibly would have invented if he had lived longer. Using infinitesimal methods he produced the first modern rectification of a curve (1645), independently discovered the quadrature and center of gravity of the cycloid, and produced what is perhaps the first graph of a logarithmic function (1647).