Antonio Schinella Conti

Antonio Schinella Conti (1677 to 1749), known by his religious title as Abate Conti, was an Italian writer, translator, mathematician, philosopher and physicist, born and died in Padua. He became an Oratorian Father in Venice in 1699 but ceased to fulfil priestly duties after 1708, which let him follow studies in philosophy, mathematics, astronomy, science and medicine. In Paris he befriended Bernard Le Bovier de Fontenelle and Nicolas Malebranche, and in 1715 he went to London to observe a solar eclipse and visit Isaac Newton, for whom he acted as an intermediary in the Leibniz and Newton calculus controversy. He translated the poems of Lady Mary Wortley Montagu and worked on a verse translation of Racine and a translation of Pope, and after returning to Italy in 1726 he encouraged scientific studies at university level and drew up a plan for an Italian scientific academy.