Carlo Rinaldini

Carlo Rinaldini was an Italian mathematician, military engineer, philosopher and metrologist from Ancona, born on 30 December 1615 into an aristocratic family originally from Siena and dead in 1698. He studied at the universities of Macerata and Bologna, served Pope Urban VIII as supervisor of the fortresses of Ferrara, Bondeno and Comacchio, and from 1649 to 1666 was professor of mathematics at the University of Pisa. Galileo's circle nicknamed him Simplicio for his fidelity to traditional Aristotelianism. His correspondence with Leopoldo de' Medici helped set the experimental agenda of the Accademia del Cimento, of which he was an active member, and he proposed experiments there on the diffusion of heat. In 1667 he went to Padua, where he held the chair of philosophy and published Philosophia rationalis, and he later taught Elena Cornaro Piscopia in Venice, declaring her Doctor of Philosophy in 1678. In 1694 he proposed calibrating thermometers by the freezing and boiling points of water.