Lezioni Accademiche ... Lettore delle Mattematiche nello Studio di Firenze e Accademico della Crusca, edited by Tommaso Bonaventuri

Florence: Nella Stamper. di S. A. R. Per Jacopo Guiducci, 1715. 1st Edition. Hardcover. Very Good. 1st Edition. Hardcover. 4to (250 x 180 mm). xlix [1], 96, [2] pp. Half title, title with engraved device of the Accademia della Crusca, engraved portrait of the author after Pietro Anichini, imprimatur leaf bound at the end, woodcut initials and ornaments, 3 woodcut illustrations in text. Contemporary limp vellum, spine with hand lettering in ink and printed shelf-mark paper label (minor worming to board edges, spotting and dust soiling of vellum, head of spine chipped). Text crisp and clean with only very minor occasional spotting, ink smudge to title verso. Provenance: Avvocato Ferrara, Biblioteca Mario Dotti (paper label to front pastedown and foot of spine), cancelled old ownership inscription on final flyleaf. A fine, unpressed copy in contemporary Italian binding. ----

FIRST EDITION of these twelve posthumously-published lectures delivered to the Accademia della Crusca, the Studio Fiorentino and the Academy of Drawing. Torricelli was a student of Galileo, and succeeded him as Professor of Mathematics at Florence. "From the point of view of physics, the lectures on the force of impact and on wind are of particular interest. In the former he said that he was reporting ideas expressed by Galileo in their informal conversations, and there is no lack of original observations. For example, the assertion that 'forces and impetus' (what we call energy) lie in bodies was interpreted by Maxwell in the last paragraph of A Treatise on Electricty and Magnetism (1873) as meaning that the propagation of energy is a mediate and not remote action. In the lecture on wind Torricelli ... advanced the modern theory that winds are produced by differences of air temperature, and hence of density, between two regions of the earth" (DSB). Bonaventuri contributed an essay on Torricelli and his work, and also reprinted his letters on the acclaimed barometric experiment, the subject of the woodcut illustrations. References & Bibliography: Dibner 149; Sparrow 190; Norman 2088; Carli and Favaro 428; Cinti 169; Riccardi I, 544; DSB XIII, pp.437-38; Honeyman 2993. - Visit our website to see more images!