1608-1647

Italian Mathematician and Physicist

Evangelista Torricelli is best known for inventing the mercury barometer (1644) and for his fundamental results in hydrodynamics. He also made important contributions to many areas of mathematics.

Torricelli was born on October 15, 1608, in Faenza, Italy. After Torricelli demonstrated his talents at an early age, his father, a textile artisan in modest circumstances, sent him to his uncle who supervised his education. He studied mathematics and philosophy at the Jesuit school in Faenza before going to Rome in 1627 to attended Sapienza College, run by Benedetto Castelli (1577-1644), a former student of Galileo (1564-1642).

In 1641 Torricelli completed De motu gravium, in which he developed some of Galileo's ideas on projectile motion. He experimentally verified many new conclusions and stated what is today known as Torricelli's law—a rigid system of bodies can move spontaneously on Earth's surface only if its center of gravity...