Giambattista Benedetti

Giambattista Benedetti (1530 to 1590) was an Italian mathematician from Venice who also worked on physics, mechanics, sundials and the science of music. In Resolutio omnium Euclidis problematum of 1553 and Demonstratio proportionum motuum localium of 1554 he proposed a new doctrine of falling bodies, holding that the speed of a body depends on the difference between its specific gravity and that of the medium, not on its total weight as the Aristotelian view had it. His theory therefore predicts that two objects of the same material but different weights fall at the same speed. A second edition of the Demonstratio added the resistance of the medium, which he made proportional to the cross section of the body, and he explained his ideas through the theory of impetus. It is thought that Galileo drew his early theory of fall from reading Benedetti.