Viviani
NAME:
Viviani, Vincenzo
ACHIEVEMENTS:
Mathematical antiquarian research and translations
NICKNAME/ALIAS:
None
DATE AND PLACE OF BIRTH:
5 April 1622, Florence, Italy
DATE AND PLACE OF DEATH AND AGE AT DEATH:
22 September 1703, Florence, Italy. Aged 81
DISCIPLINE:
Mathematician
FIELD:
Mathematics
LANGUAGE:
Italian
PARENTS:
Father: Jacopo di Michelangelo Viviani
Mother: Maria Alamanno del Nente
SIBLINGS:
???
SPOUSE:
???
CHILDREN:
???
EDUCATION:
Tuition from the Jesuits
MAJOR WORK:
“De maximis et minimis” (1659)
“Quinto libro degli Elementii di Euclide” (1674)
LIFE AND TIMES:
Viviani was born in Florence into a family descended from the French nobility. At the age of sixteen he began to study mathematics and soon came to the attention of the ruler of Florence, Duke <a patron was> Ferdinand II* , who was a patron of the arts and scholarship.
Ferdinand introduced Viviani to the aged and blind scientist <assistant to> Galileo* and Viviani became Galileo’s assistant. He always referred to himself afterwards as “Galileo’s last pupil”. Through Galileo he met <assistant to> Torricelli* whom he assisted in his laboratory.
Viviani revered Galileo and after his death in 1642 he hoped to edit and publish an account of his life and works and to develop the new ideas about mathematics Galileo’s work had stimulated. When opposition from the church prevented him from following this plan, Viviani turned to the study of the mathematics of antiquity.
Over the next fifteen years, in whatever spare time he had from his duties at the Medici court, Viviani pursued this project. He attempted to reconstruct the lost five books of Aristaeus the Elder on conic sections, and also the lost fifth book of Apollonius of Perga’s work on conics, four of which had already been published.
In 1656 he heard that <work related to> Borelli* had discovered an Arabic manuscript in Ferdinand’s library; the manuscript was sent to Rome for translation but publication was held back until Viviani had completed his reconstruction. It was published under the title “De maximis et minimis” in 1659 and when the translation of Appollonius’s own work was published in 1661, Viviani was seen to have done a remarkable job in understanding what Apollonius wrote.
Viviani was a leading member of the short-lived <member of> Accademia del Cimento* ( a fellow-member was <colleague was> Stensen*) , the scientific experimental society established under the patronage of Ferdinand’s brother, and was responsible for developing many of the Accademia’s experiments, in particular the electrical experiments and those concerning the vacuum. His list of proposed experiments to be performed in a vacuum included putting a man in a “great vacuum”.
His work was known outside Italy and he was given a pension by <pensioned by> Louis XIV* of France. The king’s minister <cultivated by> Colbert* wrote to Viviani in 1664 enclosing a letter of credit and suggesting that if Viviani associated any of his further achievements with the name of the French king, then “it will be a certain means of obliging him to continue the payments in the future”.
One of Viviani’s closest links in France was with the writer and amateur scientist, <corresponded with> Thevenot*. He also corresponded with <corresponded with> Ricci* in Rome, who advised him about what the Church would tolerate in relation to the biography of Galileo that Viviani remained determined to write.
Viviani’s work as a consulting engineer for the Medici’s, particularly on the endless problem of flood control, came to end in 1666 when he was relieved of this work and given a small pension to enable him to concentrate on his mathematical writings. In 1674 he published “Quinto libro degli Elementii di Euclide” to which he added an appendix in which he demonstrated the solution to certain geometric problems raised by Euclid, and in 1690 he produced an Italian version of Euclid’s “Elements” as part of a project to improve geometry teaching in Italy.
Following the fashion of the day, Viviani posed a mathematical problem for the academic European community. It was called the “Florentine enigma” and caused great interest: how the two geometric figures of a building constructed of a half-sphere and a cylinder would intersect. The English mathematician David <his ‘enigma’ not solved by> Gregory*s tried and failed. Viviani himself demonstrated the solution and during a visit in 1689 met <visited> Leibniz* who solved the problem.
<work related to> Christiaan Huyghens* later demonstrated that Viviani and Leibniz proposed identical solutions. Another of these problems was posed by the French mathematician <work related to> Fermat* to Torricelli, and by Torricelli to Viviani, who solved it.
In 1696 Viviani was made a foreign member of the Royal Society in England, and in 1699 an associate member of the French “Academie des Sciences”. He was also offered the post of chief astronomer in Paris, and the same position in Poland, both of which he declined. In 1701 he published his reconstruction, or “guess”, at the lost work of Aristaeus which it is impossible to evaluate because the original has not been found. Viviani’s obituary for the French academy of science was written by <obituary by> Fontenelle*.
ASSESSMENT: Viviani was a distinguished antiquarian who helped to propagate the mathematics of antiquity.
EXTRA CONNECTIONS: None
ONELINER: Vincenzo Viciani, Galileo’s assistant
BIBLIOGRAPHY:
Brown, Harcourt, Scientific Organizations in Seventeenth Century France, The Williams & Wilkins Company, Baltimore, 1934