Giovanni Maria Della Torre

Background

Giovanni Maria Della Torre was born on June 16, 1710 in Rome, Italy. His father, Marquis Michele, belonged to the famous noble family of Lavagna. Later he moved to Naples with his family.

Education

Della Torre received his primary education in Rome. In 1720 he was entered the Collegio Clementino and taught mathematics with P. Chelucci, one of the central figures of scientific divulgation in Rome in the early eighteenth century.

Career

In 1738 Della Torre was appointed to teach physical sciences in the archiépiscopal lyceum. In 1743 Charles III of Spain, king of the Two Sicilies, named him director of the royal library and royal printing press.

His studies led him into the history of philosophy, optics, and microscopy (he made several new histological identifications with an excellent compound microscope that he himself had built); in addition, he observed and recorded eruptions of Vesuvius. He was much influenced by the De rerum natura of Lucretius.

Della Torre’s most important work, however, was as an encyclopedist. His two-volume work, Scienza della natura (Naples, 1748-1749), anticipated the more famous Encyclopédie, the publication of which began in 1751.

The Scienza della natura is divided into sections, each of which is subdivided into several chapters. Each volume contains a historical preface and a detailed index. Each is illustrated; illustrations of particular interest are those of units of measurement, the pendulum, electrostatical machines, the pointing of mortar, the compressed-air gun, the refraction of light rays, and chyliferous vessels in man. In short, the Scienza della natura presents a complete and ordered picture of the state of scientific knowledge in its time.

Della Torre died in Naples on March 7, 1782; the funeral oration was held by his brother A. Bianchi.

Achievements

• Giovanni Maria Della Torre is remembered as a prominent scientist who was strongly influential in establishing the scientific climate of eighteenth-century Italy.

Religion

Della Torre was a member of the Somasca Congregation.

Membership

Della Torre was a correspondent member of the Academies of the sciences of Paris and Berlin, of the Royal Society of London, of the Fisiocritici of Siena, as well as a retiree of the Academy of Sciences of Naples.

Personality

Della Torre was a man of wide culture and of wide scientific curiosity.

Interests

• poetry

Connections

Father:

Marquis Michele Della Torre

Brother:

A. Bianchi Della Torre

teacher:

P. Chelucci