Carlo Rinaldini

Carlo Rinaldini, also written Renaldini, was an Italian mathematician, military engineer, philosopher and metrologist from Ancona, born on 30 December 1615 into an aristocratic family from Siena and dying on 18 July 1698. He studied at the universities of Macerata and Bologna, served Pope Urban VIII and supervised fortresses at Ferrara, Bondeno and Comacchio, then became rector and from 1649 to 1666 professor of mathematics at the University of Pisa. A member of the Accademia del Cimento, he proposed an experiment on the diffusion of heat for which he is credited with discovering convection in air, and in 1694 he was the first to propose calibrating a thermometer by the freezing and boiling points of water. He later held the chair of philosophy at Padua and taught Elena Cornaro Piscopia in Venice, who in 1678 became the first woman to receive a doctoral degree.