Guidobaldo del Monte
Guidobaldo del Monte , also Guidobaldo dal Monte (born January 11, 1545 in Pesaro , † January 6, 1607 in Mombaroccio ), was an Italian mathematician , philosopher and astronomer of the Renaissance .
Life
Guidobaldo del Monte, born in Pesaro , was born into the wealthy Del Monte Santa Maria family from Urbino . His father Ranieri was a respected soldier and author of two works on military architecture (fortifications). It was made Marchese del Monte by Duke Guidobaldo II of Urbino, a title that Guidobaldo inherited.
From 1564 del Monte studied mathematics at the University of Padua . Nothing is known about a degree, but such a thing was neither necessary nor usual for wealthy nobles. In Padua he made friends with the poet Torquato Tasso , whom he may have known from Urbino, where he grew up. Subsequently, del Monte took part in the Turkish Wars in Hungary, which officially ended in 1568. Then he studied mathematics, mechanics, astronomy and optics. Around 1588 he inspected the fortifications there on behalf of the Grand Duke of Tuscany . In 1590 he retired to his castle, where he devoted himself to research.
Guidobaldo del Monte was a friend and patron of Galileo Galilei for decades ; he played an important role in his appointment to Pisa and Padua and corresponded with him. He was also friends with Federico Commandino , with whom he had studied mathematics in Urbino, and with Bernardino Baldi , who was a student of Commandino around the same time as he was.
plant
His first work Mechanicorum liber (1577) was considered the most important work of its kind since antiquity. It represented a return to Archimedes' principles and advocated mathematical rigor. Guidobaldi made a strict distinction between dynamics and statics, the separation of which Galileo overcame. But the book had an influence on Galileo, even if, for example, it fell behind Jordanus Nemorarius in the treatment of weights on the inclined plane . He also criticizes contemporary mathematicians like Tartaglia in the treatment of mechanics. There are also good static analyzes, for example of pulleys according to the laws of levers.
Before 1601 he carried out an experiment to determine the shape of the orbit of projectiles, similar to that described by Galileo in his Discorsi. It took on a parabolic orbit.
He dealt with the refraction of light in water, but did not publish this during his lifetime. Del Monte was interested in a wide variety of machines, for example he dealt with Archimedes' screws for pumping water. With his teacher Commandino he improved the proportional circle .
Del Monte wrote two works on astronomy : Planisphaeriorum (1579) and Problematum astronomicorum (1609).
His work on the perspective Perspectivae libri sex (1600) is considered the best work of the Renaissance on this topic.
literature
- Paul Lawrence Rose, article in Dictionary of Scientific Biography
- Herbert Jaumann: Handbook of scholarly culture in the early modern period . Volume 1: Bio-bibliographical repertory . de Gruyter, Berlin 2004, ISBN 3-11-016069-2 , p. 321 ( online at Google books ).
- Jürgen Renn, Peter Damerow: Guidobaldo del Monte's Mechanicorum liber . epubli, Berlin 2010, ISBN 978-3-86931-962-9 ( online ).
- Stillman Drake , I. Drabkin Mechanics in Sixteenth-Century Italy , Madison, Wisconsin 1969 (English translation of excerpts from del Monte)
Web links
- John J. O'Connor, Edmund F. Robertson : Guidobaldo del Monte. In: MacTutor History of Mathematics archive .
- Galileo Project
- Digitized works in European Cultural Heritage Online
| personal data | |
|---|---|
| SURNAME | Guidobaldo del Monte |
| BRIEF DESCRIPTION | Italian mathematician, philosopher and astronomer |
| DATE OF BIRTH | January 11, 1545 |
| PLACE OF BIRTH | Pesaro |
| DATE OF DEATH | January 6, 1607 |
| Place of death | Mombaroccio |