Geminiano Montanari

Geminiano Montanari (1633 to 1687) was an Italian astronomer, lens-maker and proponent of the experimental approach to science, and a member of several learned academies, notably the Accademia dei Gelati. He is best known for his observation, made around 1667, that Algol, the second-brightest star in the constellation Perseus, varied in brightness; others had probably seen the effect before, but he was the first named astronomer to record it. Born in Modena, he studied law in Florence and took a law degree at Salzburg in 1656, then pursued mathematics, and in 1661 became court philosopher and mathematician in Modena. Through the patronage of Cornelio Malvasia he was appointed to a chair of mathematics at the University of Bologna in December 1664, and in July 1678 he moved to the new Paduan chair of astronomy and meteorology. His students included Domenico Guglielmini, Francesco Bianchini, Gianantonio Davia and Luigi Ferdinando Marsili.