Giambattista della Porta

Giambattista della Porta, also known as Giovanni Battista Della Porta, lived from 1535 to 1615 and was an Italian scholar, polymath and playwright who lived in Naples during the Renaissance, the Scientific Revolution and the Counter-Reformation. Born at Vico Equense to the nobleman Nardo Antonio della Porta, he had an informal education from tutors and visiting scholars and spent most of his life on scientific work. His most famous book, Magia Naturalis (Natural Magic), first published in 1558, covers occult philosophy, astrology, alchemy, mathematics, meteorology and natural philosophy, and earned him the name professor of secrets. In 1563 he published De Furtivis Literarum Notis on cryptography, in which he described the first known digraphic substitution cipher. He also wrote on optics, comparing the shape of the human eye to the lens in his camera obscura, and claimed to have invented the first telescope, but died while preparing a treatise in support of that claim.