1608-1679

Italian Naturalist, Mathemetician and Physicist

Giovanni Borelli was born in Naples, Italy. Little is known about his early life, education, and family, other than his precocious mastery of mathematics. There is uncertainty about whether he ever studied medicine formally, but he did study mathematics with Benedetto Castelli (1577-1644) in Rome. Borelli was appointed to the chair of mathematics at the University of Messina by 1640. In 1642, inspired by the work of Galileo Galilei (1564-1642), Borelli obtained the consent of the University to take a prolonged leave from his professorship in order to study with Galileo and Evangelista Torricelli (1608-1647) in Florence. Unfortunately, Galileo died that year and Borelli returned to the University. In 1656 Ferdinand, Duke of Tuscany invited Borelli to serve as professor of mathematics at the University of Pisa. During the same year, Marcello Malpighi (1628-1694) joined the university as a professor of...