Documents for a biography of Pietro Mengoli (1627--1686) (Q6546629)

This article describes in detail the biography of the mathematician Pietro Mengoli (1627--1686) who lived in the Italian city of Bologna and taught at the university there. The article is in Italian. The article reconstructs the life of Pietro Mengoli and contains long quotations from sources describing his life and sources describing his teaching. The article does \textit{not} analyze Mengoli's mathematical works. (For an analysis of Mengoli's mathematical works, the article refers the reader to the studies of Maria Rosa Massa Esteve (Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya). One finds a list of her studies at \url{https://futur.upc.edu/MariaRosaMassaEsteve}.)\N\NThe article situates Mengoli's life and work using the concept of \textit{isolation}: the isolation of the Italian mathematical and scientific community from the most vigorous intellectual forces in Europe. The most emblematic event, according to the author, is the disappearance of Galileo and those linked to his work, \textit{in primis} Benedetto Castelli, Bonaventura Cavalieri, and Evangelista Torricelli. Other events along the same line, according to the author, are the closing of the Accademia del Cimento in Florence, the rise to prominence of Antonio Magliabechi who directed the attention of Italian mathematicians to uninteresting problems, and, closely related to Mengoli, the decandence of the once-renowned University of Bologna.\N\NMengoli was born in Bologna. The author points out that the year of birth is usually said to be 1625 but the author shows a document that says that Mengoli was baptized in 1627. On this basis, the author (quite reasonably) deduces that the year of Mengoli's birth is 1627. Mengoli studied with Cavalieri at the university of Bologna. Cavalieri died in 1647 and, in 1649, Mengoli became lecturer in arithmetics, a modest position, at the same university. In 1650, Mengoli obtained his degree (\textit{laurea}) in philosophy. In 1651, Mengoli obtained the more substantial position of a lecturer in mechanics, while keeping, for some time, also the lectorship in arithmetics. The lectorship in mechanics gave Mengoli ample freedom to choose what to teach and he took advantage of such freedom to explore advanced subjects, often, says the author, from an original point of view.\N\NThe author reproduces the syllabi of the courses that Mengoli gave in the academic years 1654/55 and 1656/57. From the syllabi, the author infers that Mengoli was working on a long-term project of reconstructing mechanics on a unitary basis.\N\NThe author reconstructs other details of Mengoli's academic career (like his salary progression) and life (for example, a judicial controversy in which he was involved). The author concludes with documents that indicate that Mengoli died on June 6 1686 and his will.