Lezioni accademiche

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Torricelli (1608-47), Galileo's most promising pupil, succeeded him as professor of mathematics at Florence. This work, published nearly seventy years fter his death, contains the lectures he gave to the Accademia Crusca and on other occasions; they deal with problems of mechanics, physics, meteorology, and military architecture.

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. in the lecture on wind, Torricelli advanced the modern theory that winds are produced by difference of air temperature.

The fifty-page introduction by the editor, Tomaso Bonaventura, includes the tow letter by Torricelli to Michelangelo Ricci of 11 and 28 June 1644, in which he described his epoch-making experiment witht the tube of mercury.