Giovanni Alfonso Borelli

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Giovanni Alfonso Borelli

Giovanni Alfonso Borelli (born January 28, 1608 in Naples , † December 31, 1679 in Rome ) was an Italian physicist , mathematician and astronomer and is considered an important Iatromechanic .

Life

Borelli was one of five children of the Spanish soldier Miguel Alonso, who was stationed in Castel Nuovo in Naples, which had been under Spanish rule for over 100 years. His mother, Laura Porrello, was Italian. Of the siblings, only his younger brother Filippo (* 1614) reached adulthood. He was baptized as Giovanni Francesco Antonio Alonso in 1608. He later changed his name to Borelli (which sounded similar to his mother's maiden name) and his first name to Alfonso. From 1614 the family lived in Castel Sant Elmo. Due to contacts with the philosopher Tommaso Campanella , who was imprisoned there as a heretic , the father was temporarily banished from Naples and went to Rome, but returned to the Castle of San Elmo after the pardon in 1617 and died in 1624. His mother survived him until 1640 and also worked in the Castle of San Elmo.

Little is known about Borelli's early years. Possibly he attended medical lectures in Naples and he was also acquainted with Campanella, who from 1618 was under relaxed detention conditions in Castel Nuovo and was able to receive visitors. Maybe he was his student too. In 1628 Borelli went to Rome and changed his name in the process, hiding his Spanish (and Neapolitan) origins. Campanella had also been in Rome since 1626 and was at large from 1628. Campanella introduced Borelli to the mathematics professor at La Sapienza University Benedetto Antonio Castelli , and Borelli became acquainted with the works of Euclid and Apollonios von Perge , and also studied astronomy and mechanics. He also came into contact with Evangelista Torricelli, a student of Galileo who was Castelli's secretary. At this time the trial of Galileo took place in 1632, which ended with his revocation of his conviction in 1633 to house arrest. Campanella also ran into difficulties with the Inquisition and fled to Paris in 1634, accompanied by Borelli's brother Filippo.

With a recommendation from Castelli, Borelli went to Messina in 1635 , where he became a professor of mathematics (he received the chair in 1639). On the side he also did volcanological research and climbed Mount Etna . In 1639 he was a member of the Accademia della Fucina in Messina, which was founded that year. He also came across the posthumous writings of the Sicilian mathematician Franciscus Maurolicus , which he edited for a publication who, among other things, tried to reconstruct the books V and VI by Apollonios von Perge (published only in 1654 by Borelli) and linked to Archimedes . Due to his increased reputation (Castelli proposed him in 1640 as a mathematics professor in Pisa, but the chair went to someone else) as a mathematician, he was sent on a journey by the Senate of Messina in 1641 to recruit more professors for the university. He visited Rome, Naples and Florence, but came too late to meet Galileo, who had died in 1642, and instead met his pupil Vincenzo Viviani and Prince Leopold de Medici (brother of the Grand Duke), who was interested in science. In Bologna he met Bonaventura Cavalieri and he also visited Padua and Venice before returning to Messina.

After he was passed over as the successor to Cavalieri in Bologna in 1650 (in favor of Giovanni Domenico Cassini ) he became professor of mathematics in Pisa in 1656. In 1667 he returned to Messina to his old chair. Since he actively opposed the Spanish rule in Sicily, he had to leave the island again in 1672 to avoid arrest. He went to Rome and was a member of the circle around the former Queen Christina of Sweden . After he was robbed, he had to seek refuge with clergymen in the Casa di San Pantaleo and taught mathematics in their school.

plant

De motu animalium , 1685

Borelli is considered a pioneer in biophysics. In 1649 he published a work on the devastating epidemic of 1647/48 in Sicily. The epidemiological investigation is considered an early example of the use of experimental methods in physiology, to which Borelli devoted himself in detail from then on, especially the mechanics of muscle movement and the movement of animals. He rejected Aristotle's view of an animal spirit residing in the body and explained the movement of muscles (including the heart) purely mechanically using elementary mathematics and based on anatomical studies. In Pisa he came into contact with the professor in Bologna Marcello Malpighi , who had similar ideas. Borelli was a significant member of the Accademia del Cimento , which existed until around 1667. His contentious character is said to have been a reason for the dissolution of the academy. His main work in biomechanics ( iatromechanics ) appeared only after his death, financed by Queen Christina of Sweden and edited by the clergy of San Pantaleo ( De motu animalium , 2 volumes, Rome 1680, 1681). This made him the "founder of movement physiology". He found successors for his ideas above all in Italy, particularly with Lorenzo Bellini (1643–1704), professor in Pisa, and Giorgio Baglivi (1669–1707), professor in Rome.

In 1658 he published his treatment of Euclid's elements as Euclides restitutus . Soon afterwards he identified an Arabic manuscript in the Biblioteca Laurenziana in Florence as the long-lost books V, VI and VII of Apollonio's conic sections and published it in Rome in collaboration with the Arabic expert Abraham Ecchellensis - it appeared in Florence in 1661.

He also dealt with astronomy, starting with a publication on the great comet in 1664 , proving that it was further away than the moon, changed its distance from the earth and probably orbited in a parabolic or elliptical orbit. In 1665 he founded an observatory in the fortress of San Miniato near Pisa and in 1666 published a larger work on the physical causes of the movement of the moons of Jupiter (called Medicean planets, the work was also dedicated to his patron, the Grand Duke of Tuscany): Theoricae mediceorum planetarum ex causis physicis deductae . Like Johannes Kepler, he suspected elliptical orbits (described mathematically in the conic sections of Apollonios) and assumed that the cause was the same gravitational force that also attracts masses to the earth, in conjunction with a centrifugal force. The book was known to Isaac Newton , who later dealt with these fundamental ideas (especially the connection between the force of gravity acting on earth and the movement of the heavenly bodies) much more thoroughly in his main work.

With a work from 1670, he was also a pioneer in the study of capillarity (he found that the height a liquid reached was inversely proportional to the radius of the tube).

In his book Euclides restitutus (1658) he tries to present the elements of Euclid in a clear, contemporary way and criticizes the postulate of parallels .

literature

Web links

Commons : Giovanni Alfonso Borelli  - Collection of Images, Videos and Audio Files

References and comments

  1. ↑ He made further observations when it erupted in 1669
  2. ↑ In the 17th century as iatrophysics referred
  3. ↑ Markwart Michler : From the history of movement therapy. Würzburg medical history reports 24, 2005, pp. 195–221, here p. 210
  4. ^ Francesco Trevisani: Giovanni Alfonso Borelli. In: Wolfgang U. Eckart , Christoph Gradmann (Hrsg.): Ärztelexikon. From antiquity to the present. 3. Edition. Springer Verlag, Heidelberg / Berlin / New York 2006, p. 58. Ärztelexikon 2006 , doi : 10.1007 / 978-3-540-29585-3 .
  5. ^ Brewster Life of Newton , Volume 1, 1855, pp. 282 f on Borelli
  6. ↑ Pierre-Gilles de Gennes , Francoise Brochard-Wyart, David Quéré Capillarity and Wetting Phenomena , Springer Verlag, 2004, p. 49
personal data
SURNAME Borelli, Giovanni Alfonso
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Italian physicist and astronomer
DATE OF BIRTH January 28, 1608
PLACE OF BIRTH Naples
DATE OF DEATH December 31, 1679
Place of death Rome