Eustachio Manfredi

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Eustachio Manfredi (born September 22, 1674 in Bologna ; † February 15, 1739 there ) was an Italian astronomer, mathematician and poet.

Eustachio Manfredi

Life

Elementi della geometria piana e solida e della trigonometria , 1755

Manfredi, the son of a notary, attended the Jesuit school in Bologna and studied law at the University of Bologna with the degree (Laurea, both in civil and canon law) in 1692. However, he never practiced as a lawyer, but was interested in mathematics, hydraulics, Astronomy (which he studied with Domenico Guglielmini ) and poetry and founded the Accademia degli Inquieti in Bologna in 1690 to conduct scientific and literary discussions with like-minded people. They met first in his house and later with other members (such as Count Ferdinando Marsili (1658-1730)) and went into the Accademia delle Scienze dell'Istituto di Bologna, founded in 1711. In 1699 he became a mathematics professor at the University of Bologna, although he did not have the required laureate in philosophy (he did not receive it until 1738). His patrons (including the Marquis Giovanni Giuseppe Orsi (1652–1733), later a member of the Royal Society) took into account that he had to pay for the family alone because of the strokes of fate that struck his father and had to leave Bologna. In 1704 he also became supervisor of hydraulic engineering in Bologna and he was director of the college of Montalto, a school for prospective clergy, which he remained until 1711. From 1711 he was director of the Astronomical Observatory in Bologna, which he had to set up with staff, and responsible for astronomy within the Accademia delle Scienze of Bologna.

He began publishing astronomical tables ( ephemeris ) in Bologna (continued by his successors until 1844), with his sisters Maddalena (1674-1744) and Teresa (1679-1767) helping him with the calculation. Two of his brothers, Eraclito Manfredi (1682–1759, professor of astronomy in Bologna) and Gabriele Manfredi (1681–1761, professor of mathematics in Bologna), were also interested in science, and a third brother (Emilio, 1679–1742) became a Jesuit. Manfredi was in correspondence with Giovanni Domenico Cassini , who before him was professor of astronomy in Bologna, but then went to the Paris observatory. Cassini also provided him with data for his ephemeris. At his observatory he determined the exact longitude and latitude of Bologna. He corresponded with Pierre-Louis Moreau de Maupertuis about the shape of the earth.

In 1707 he discovered a new comet with Vittorio Stancari and in long series of observations in which he wanted to prove the parallax of the fixed stars due to the movement of the earth ( Friedrich Wilhelm Bessel only succeeded in 1838), the discovery of the aberration of starlight, published in 1729 (De annuis inerrantium stellarum aberrationibus). But here the Englishman James Bradley got ahead of him. Manfredi had made these discoveries as early as 1719 (he was also responsible for the term aberration), but was only able to publish them ten years later due to problems with church censorship. The discovery contributed to the later acceptance of the heliocentric worldview in Italy also by the Catholic Church after its initial rejection and condemnation of Galileo Galilei . In his day, however, he was very cautious about it, in contrast to Bradley, who interpreted it as evidence of the earth's movement around the sun and the finiteness of the speed of light.

For a long time he was heavily involved with hydraulic engineering problems, not only in Bologna, but also in the Republic of Venice in 1730/31 (where he worked with Bernardino Zendrini ) and in Rome in 1732/33 (draining the Pontine Marshes, regulating the Tiber).

He was also known as a poet in his time and was a member of the offshoot of the Accademia degli Arcadi (as Aci Depusiano ) founded by himself and others in Bologna in 1690 . He published his poems in an anthology in 1713 and they were also edited in an anthology in 1748 after his death by his friend Giampietro Zanotti. He composed in the style of Arcadian poems and sonnets in the style of Petrarch . His best-known poem was Donna, negli occhi vostri , dedicated to his childhood sweetheart Giulia Caterina Vandi, who became a nun. Spiritual poems were also popular at the time.

In 1726 he became a member of the French Académie des Sciences and in 1728 the Royal Society . He was also a member of the Accademia della Crusca (1702).

The asteroid (13225) Manfredi was named in his honor.

Fonts

  • Ephemerides motuum coelestium, Bologna, 2 volumes 1715 (for the years 1715 to 1725)
  • De transitu Mercurii per solem anno 1723, 1724
  • De gnomone meridiano bononiensi, 1736
  • Instituzioni astronomiche, 1749
  • Della natura de 'fiumi 1739 (On the nature of rivers)
  • Defectus lunae observatus 1736
  • Defectus solis observatus 1738
  • Elementi della geometria piana e solida e della trigonometria 1755

  • Replica de 'bolognesi ad alcune considerazioni de' sig.ri ferraresi nella materia delle acque , 1717

  • Compendio et esame del libro pubblicato in Modena col titolo Effetti dannosi che produrrà il Reno se sia messo in Po 'di Lombardia , 1718

  • Domenico Guglielmini , Della natura de 'fiumi, trattato fisico-matematico . Nuova edizione con le annotazioni di Eustachio Manfredi, 1739

literature

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Fabrizio Bonoli, Andrea Gualandi: The search for stellar parallaxes and the discovery of the aberration of light: the observational proofs of the earth's revolution, Eustachio Manfredi, and the Bologna case, Journal for the history of astronomy, Volume 40, 2009, p 155-172
  2. ^ Entry on Manfredi, Eustachio (1674 - 1739) in the archive of the Royal Society , London
personal data
SURNAME Manfredi, Eustachio
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Italian astronomer
DATE OF BIRTH September 22, 1674
PLACE OF BIRTH Bologna
DATE OF DEATH February 15, 1739
Place of death Bologna