1586-1650

Italian physicist who discovered electrostatic repulsion (c. 1620). He is also remembered for misinterpreting Giovanni Battista Baliani's experiments on falling weights. Baliani observed that different weights take approximately the same time to fall equal distances. Cabeo concluded that any two weights will fall equal distances in the same length of time regardless of the medium. Vincenzo Renieri conducted experiments that refuted Cabeo's claim. Cabeo's major works are Philosophia magnetica (1629) and In quatuor libros meteorologicorum Aristotelis commentaria (1646).