Giuseppe Moletti

Ephemeris by Moletti, 1563

Giuseppe Moletti , also Moleti, Moleto and other spellings, (* May 1, 1531 in Messina , † March 25, 1588 in Padua ) was an Italian physicist, mathematician and astronomer. He was involved in the Gregorian calendar reform and a forerunner of Galileo Galilei on the chair of mathematics in Padua.

Life

He came from a respected family in Messina and, after his talent in mathematics and science was recognized, was a student of Francesco Maurolico . Moletti's reputation brought him an invitation to the court of Mantua, where he was the mathematics teacher of Prince Vincenzo in the ducal family. After twelve years in Mantua, he was offered the chair of mathematics in Padua, which was then under the Republic of Venice. Here his work on the Gregorian calendar reform, which came into force in 1582, began.

Moletti was in contact with the young Galileo Galilei in Pisa, who sent him work on the location of priorities. Moletti was held in high esteem in Padua and it was not until four years after his death that his chair was filled by Galileo.

Many of his planned works remained unfinished, only four books were printed: an introduction to geography, contained in an edition of the geography of Claudius Ptolemy , ephemeris, an astronomical table and a treatise on calendar reform. His estate includes lecture materials ( Euclid's elements, the optics of Witelo and Alhazen , the Sphaera of Sacrobosco ), comments on Nicolaus Copernicus De revolutionibus orbium coelestium and the Sphaera of Theodosios of Bithynia, as well as unfinished works (on arithmetic, philosophy of mathematics, as an introduction into astrology and ephemeris according to Copernicus).

Of particular interest for the history of science was his unprinted manuscript on mechanics (found and made famous in the 19th century by the Galileo researcher Giambattista Venturi in the Bibliotheca Ambrosiana), the Dialogues on Mechanics. In it he tries to develop mechanics strictly as a science on an equal footing with other areas of applied mathematics such as astronomy, optics and harmony and to expand it into other areas of the description of nature. It was based on an influential pseudo-Aristotle pamphlet on mechanics that became known at the time . Here you can also find the law of free fall , later published by Galileo , which was in contrast to the teaching of Aristotle: Bodies of the same shape fall equally quickly regardless of their weight. Moletti stated that he had experimentally verified this himself many times. The book is in Italian in dialogue form and should also propagate the usefulness of the mechanics (the dialogue partners are only indicated by initial letters, but it takes place between the Duke of Mantua and a noble officer visiting him). In this respect it is similar to later works by Galileo, but Moletti does not attempt to develop a mathematical theory of motion and his experimental skills are far behind those of Galileo.

Fonts

• WR Laird (Ed.): The unfinished manuscript of Giuseppe Moletti, An ediction and english translation of his Dialogue on Mechanics 1576. University of Toronto Press 2000

literature

• A. Carugo: Giuseppe Moleto: Mathematics and the Aristotelian theory of science in Padua in the second half of the 16th century. In: Luigi Olivieri: Aristotelismo Veneto e Scienza Moderna. Padua 1983
• Antonio Favaro: Giuseppe Moletti. In: A. Mieli: Gli Scienziati Italiani. Rome 1921
• WR Laird: Giuseppe Moletti's "Dialogue on Mechanics" (1576). In: Renaissance Quarterly. Volume 40, 1987, pp. 209-223

Web links

• Federica Favino: Moleti, Giuseppe, Dizionario Biografico degli Italiani, 2011