Andrea Argoli

Andrea Argoli (1570 to 1657), born at Tagliacozzo in the Abruzzi, was an Italian mathematician, astronomer and astrologer and one of the most important seventeenth century makers of ephemerides, which gave the positions of astronomical objects at given times. His father Ottavio was a lawyer. He studied medicine, mathematics and astronomy at Naples and taught mathematics at the Sapienza University of Rome from 1622 to 1627, losing the post because of his involvement with astrology. The Venetian Senate then appointed him to the chair of mathematics at Padua in 1632, and in 1638 he was made a Knight of the Order of Saint Mark. After recovering from a grave illness in 1646 he wore the Franciscan habit for the rest of his life. He belonged to the Accademia Galileiana in Padua and the Accademia degli Incogniti in Venice, was one of the first Italian scholars to acclaim Harvey's discovery of the circulation of the blood, and his Pandosion sphaericum of 1644 is a large geocentric cosmography.