Vincenzo Viviani

Vincenzo Viviani (1622 to 1703) was an Italian mathematician and engineer from Florence who spent his working life at the court of the Medici Grand Dukes of Tuscany. Taught mathematics by the Scolopian friar Clemente Settimi, he was presented to Grand Duke Ferdinando II de' Medici as a teenager, and in 1639 he moved into Galileo's villa at Arcetri as companion, student and collaborator, staying until Galileo died in 1642. He then worked alongside Evangelista Torricelli and in 1644 carried out the experiment Torricelli had proposed, which led to the barometer. Viviani spent much of his life reconstructing lost works of Greek geometry, including Aristaeus's Five Books concerning Solid Loci, published in 1701, and a restoration of the fifth book of Apollonius's Conics, published in 1659. He also worked on the geometry of the cycloid, and he gathered an enormous collection of Galileo's papers for an edition that was only completed long after his death.