Gasparo Berti

Background

Gasparo Berti was born around 1600, in Mantua, Italy, and spent most of his life in Rome.

Career

Berti was extremely active in the scientific circles of the papal city, networking and collaborating with Luca Holstein, Athanasius Kircher, and Raffaello Magiotti.

In 1643, at the death of Benedetto Castelli, he was appointed his successor to the chair of mathematics at the Sapienza (the University of Rome), but he died the same year in Rome, Italy.

Berti's research is of particular importance for its close ties with the work of Evangelista Torricelli on atmospheric pressure. Between 1640 and 1643, Berti developed several experimental instruments designed to empirically test the distance to which water will rise in a siphon, which had been fixed by Galileo at 18 braccia (c. 11 meters).

In a March 1648 letter to Marin Mersenne (1588-1648), Raffaello Magiotti describes a large "lead siphon" c. 22 braccia long that Berti had set up in the courtyard of his house. Magiotti claims that Berti, using the results of his experiments, managed to disprove Galileo's findings. Reports by Athanasius Kircher and Gaspar Schott also describe Berti's experiments aimed at demonstrating the presence of the vacuum in a barometric tube.

Achievements

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  Gasparo Berti was a mathematician, astronomer and physicist, who is most famous today for his experiment in which he unknowingly created the first working barometer. He also mapped the Roman catacombs.

Connections

colleague:

Athanasius Kircher

Athanasius Kircher was a German scholar and polymath, who published around 40 major works, most notably in the fields of comparative religion, geology, and medicine.

colleague:

Raffaello Magiotti

Raffaello Magiotti was an Italian astronomer, mathematician and physicist, who played a role in the context of experimentation which preceded, and to a large extent, prepared the way, for the torricellian barometric experiments.