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Person

Evangelista Torricelli

A portrait of Evangelista Torricelli, wearing a black garment with a white lace collar, set against a dark background.

Italian mathematician and physicist (1608–1647) best known for inventing the mercury barometer and for explaining atmospheric pressure. He served as Galileo's secretary in the last months of the older man's life and succeeded him as mathematician to the Grand Duke of Tuscany. He worked at the frontier of pre-Newtonian calculus, and died of typhoid in Florence at thirty-nine.

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