Background
Cabeo was born on February 26, 1586, in Ferrara, Italy.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B01DDWMNOM/?tag=2022091-20
1629
engineer mathematician philosopher theologian
Cabeo was born on February 26, 1586, in Ferrara, Italy.
Cabeo was educated at the Jesuit college in Parma beginning in 1602. He passed the next two years in Padua and spent 1606-1607 studying in Piacenza before completing three years (1607-1610) of study in philosophy at Parma. He then spent another four years (1612-1616) studying theology in Parma and another year’s apprenticeship at Mantua.
Cabeo taught theology and mathematics in Parma, then in 1622 he became a preacher. For a time he received patronage of the Dukes of Mantua and the Este in Ferrara. During this time he was involved in hydraulics projects. He would later return to teach mathematics again in Genoa.
Cabeo is remembered mainly because in Genoa he became acquainted with Giovanni Battista Baliani, who at the fortress of Savona had experimented with falling weights, which, although of different heaviness, took almost the same length of time to reach the ground. Cabeo interpreted these experiments perhaps too broadly and was therefore the indirect cause of other experiments conducted by Vincenzo Renieri, who refers to them in a letter of 13 March 1641 to Galileo. These experiments, however, showed considerable differences in time of descent because of air resistance. Galileo wrote in the Discorsi e dimostrazioni matematiche intorno a due nuove scienze that to conduct such experiments “involves some difficulties” and referred to descent along an inclined plane and to the oscillations of a pendulum. Thus Vincenzo Viviani’s account of the results of Galileo’s experiments that involved dropping different weights from the top of the bell tower in Pisa seems to be completely unfounded.
He published two major works, Philosophia magnetica and In quatuor libros meteorologicorum Aristotelis commentaria. The first examined the cause of the Earth's magnetism and was devoted to a study of the work of William Gilbert. The second work was a commentary on Aristotle's Meteorology.
Cabeo died on June 30, 1650, in Genoa, Italy.
Cabeo is noted for his contributions to physics experiments and observations. He observed the experiments of falling objects, and wrote about these experiments noting that two different objects fall in the same amount of time regardless of the medium. He also performed experiments with pendulums and observed that an electrically charged body can attract non-electrified objects. He also noted that two charged objects repelled each other.
Niccolò Cabeo was a Jesuit.
Cabeo thought the Earth immobile, and so did not accept its motion as the cause of the magnetic field. He was also opposed to Galileo's theories.
Cabeo was a member of the Society of Jesus.
