Eustachio Manfredi

Eustachio Manfredi was an Italian mathematician, astronomer and poet, born in Bologna on 20 September 1674 and died there on 15 February 1739. He studied at the Jesuit school and the University of Bologna, took a law degree in 1691 and pursued mathematics and astronomy alongside it. Around 1690 he founded the Accademia degli Inquieti, which met in his house and later merged into the Accademia delle Scienze dell'Istituto di Bologna, inaugurated in 1714. He held the chair of mathematics at Bologna from 1698 and directed the Bologna astronomical observatory from 1711 until his death. In 1719 he discovered the aberration of starlight, ten years before James Bradley, and he published ephemerides and a treatise on aberration. He belonged to the Paris Academy of Sciences and the Royal Society.