Vincenzo Viviani

Today is the birthday of physicist Vincenzo Viviani, born in Florence, Italy in 1622. In 1639 Galileo, who was blind and under house arrest by the Catholic Church, took Viviani in as a student and collaborator. After Galileo’s death in 1642, Viviani dedicated much of his life to preserving the late scientist’s documents and legacy. But Viviani was also an accomplished mathematician and physicist in his own right. He made advances in geometry and restored a number of works by ancient Greek mathematicians. In 1656 Viviani and Giovanni Borelli conducted experiments to pin down the speed of sound. After confirming that sound moves at a constant velocity, the two physicists measured the time difference between seeing the flash and hearing the boom of a fired cannon. They came up with a value of 350 meters per second, a much more accurate figure than previous estimates. Viviani has a crater on the moon named after him, despite the fact that sound cannot travel through the moon’s nonexistent atmosphere.

Date in History: 5 April 1622