Giovanni Poleni

Giovanni Poleni was an Italian marquess, physicist and mathematician, born in Venice on 23 August 1683 and dead on 15 November 1761. He studied at the school of the Somaschi Fathers, became professor of astronomy at Padua at twenty five, took the chair of physics in 1715 and in 1719 succeeded Nicolaus II Bernoulli as professor of mathematics. An expert in hydraulic engineering, he was charged by the Venetian Senate with the waters of lower Lombardy. He built the first calculating machine of pinwheel design in 1709, described in his Miscellanea, and in 1729 a device for drawing logarithmic functions. His observations on falling weights led to a controversy with Samuel Clarke in the vis viva dispute. In 1739 he received a new chair of experimental philosophy and founded a physics theatre and laboratory at Padua, and in 1748 Benedict XIV called him to Rome to examine the cracks in the dome of Saint Peter's, which he studied with a hanging chain.