By Sabrina Fay
Many of the inventions we use every day were conceptualized and brought to bear by great minds hundreds of years before our time. Individuals like Leonardo Davinci and Nicolaus Copernicus were criticized by a world that wasn't ready for their ideas, but are now revered as visionary inventors. Perhaps less well-known, but no less deserving of recognition, is the humble inventor behind the barometer: Evangelista Torricelli.
Portrait of Torricelli via Wikipedia
His Beginning
Evangelista Torricelli was born on the 15th of October in 1608, to Gaspare Torricelli and Caterina Angetti in the Faena region of Romagna which is now Italy. Belonging to a fairly poor family that worked with textiles, Evangelista was fortunate in that his parents saw his intelligence and sent him to his monk uncle to be educated until he was old enough to be sent to a Jesuit school. It was there that he studied philosophy and mathematics for a couple years, filling in for his mentor Benedetto Castelli when he was away for Rome. He studied all manner of math and astronomy, and was a believer in the Copernican theory that the Earth revolves around the Sun. Yet, at the same time, he astutely recognized the controversy surrounding such an idea and decided to focus on mathematics. Through years of work and research, he perfected his titular invention: the barometer.
Torricelli and others working on a prototype of the barometer via Encyclopedia Britannica
His Invention
The barometer is a device that measures atmospheric pressure through the changes of mercury flow in a tube from day to day. The barometer was a revolutionary innovation at the time because in its invention was the creation of a vacuum, a space devoid of air or other matter that was thought at the time to not be possible. The norm of scientific thinking was based off of the findings of those like Aristotle, who famously said “nature abhors a vacuum”. Nonetheless, Torricelli created one as part of a system which to this day is used to measure sea level and altitude, providing vital information for hikers, pilots, and sailors. His contributions completely changed the way people measured pressure, and he even had a unit of measurement named after him: the torr (mm/Hg).
Diagram of a barometer via the University of Washington College of the Environment
Aside from science, however, Torricelli’s other great passion was pure mathematics; he published the Opera Geometrica, and through that and other works contributed to geometry and the development of integral calculus.
His Inspiration
Evangelista Torricelli had a great mind of his own, but he also drew from the other geniuses of the age. As part of a private arrangement, he studied under Benedetto Castelli, who worked at the University of Sapienza in Rome. Through Castelli he met Galileo Galilei, who he greatly admired and who came to admire him in return, due to the visionary nature of his work. In fact, Torricelli was Galileo’s assistant for the last few months of his life, succeeding him as professor of mathematics at the Florentine Academy.
Evangelista and Galileo via Glogster
His Legacy
Though Torricelli and Freddie Mercury both have stellar moustaches, and both are known for their pressure-related endeavors, there is much more to them than that. Torricelli's work in both science and math continues to be built upon and put to use each and every day, and his historical importance is recognized throughout circles in the humanities.