Major Italian Astronomers
Jacopo Dondi dell'Orologio (1290-1359)
Italian physician, astronomer and clock-maker. He is remembered today as a pioneer in the art of clock design and construction, having supervised the construction of the astronomical clock in Padua—the first mechanical clock in the world and one of the world's oldest working clocks.
Giovanni Dondi dell'Orologio (c. 1330-1388)
Italian physician, astronomer and mechanical engineer. He is remembered today as a pioneer in the art of clock design and construction, having designed and built a highly complex astronomical clock and planetarium known as the Astrarium, which was an ambitious attempt to describe and model the planetary system with mathematical precision and technological sophistication.
Luigi Lilio or Aloysius Lilius (c. 1510-1574)
Italian physician, mathematician, astronomer, philosopher and chronologist. He was the primary author who provided the proposal which became the basis of the Gregorian Calendar. In computer science, the Lilian date is the number of days since the adoption of the Gregorian calendar on October 15, 1582. The crater Lilius on the Moon is also named after him, as is the asteroid 2346 Lilio.
Galileo Galilei (1564-1642)
Galileo Galilei was an Italian physicist, mathematician, astronomer, and philosopher whose achievements include improvements to the telescope and consequent astronomical observations. His contributions to observational astronomy include the telescopic confirmation of the phases of Venus, the discovery of the four largest satellites of Jupiter (named the Galilean moons in his honour), and the observation and analysis of sunspots. He also worked in applied science and technology, inventing an improved military compass and other instruments. He has been referred to as the “Father of modern physics” and “the Father of Modern Science”.
Niccolò Zucchi (1586-1670)
Italian astronomer, physicist and Jesuit priest. As an astronomer he may have been the first to see the belts on the planet Jupiter in 1630, and reported spots on Mars in 1640. His "Optica philosophia experimentis et ratione a fundamentis constituta" described his experiments using a curved mirror instead of a lens as a telescope objective, which may be the earliest known description of a reflecting telescope. He also demonstrated that phosphors generate rather than store light.
Giovanni Battista Riccioli (1598-1671)
Italian astronomer and Jesuit priest known, among other things, for his experiments with pendulums and with falling bodies, for his discussion of 126 arguments concerning the motion of the Earth, and for introducing the current scheme of lunar nomenclature. He is also widely known for discovering the first double star.
Giovanni Alfonso Borelli (1608-1679)
Italian mathematician, astronomer, physiologist, physicist and philosopher. He contributed to the modern principle of scientific investigation by continuing Galileo's practice of testing hypotheses against observation. Although his major scientific achievements are focused around his investigation into biomechanics, he also made extensive studies of Jupiter's moons, the mechanics of animal locomotion and, in microscopy, of the constituents of blood.
Giovanni Domenico Cassini (1625-1712)
Cassini was an Italian mathematician, astronomer and engineer known most notably for having discovered four satellites of the planet Saturn and noted the division of the rings of Saturn (with the Cassini Division being named after him). He was also the first of his family to begin work on the project of creating a topographic map of France. Launched in 1997, the Cassini spaceprobe was named after him and became the fourth to visit Saturn and the first to orbit the planet.
Giuseppe Luigi Lagrangia or Joseph-Louis Lagrange (1736-1813)
Italian mathematician and astronomer. He made significant contributions to the fields of physics, analysis, calculus, algebra, number theory, group theory, and both classical and celestial mechanics. As an astronomer, his attempt to solve the general three-body problem led to discovering the two constant-pattern solutions, collinear and equilateral. These solutions were later seen to explain what are now known as the Lagrangian points.
Giuseppe Piazzi (1746-1826)
Italian astronomer, mathematician and Catholic priest. He established an observatory at Palermo, now the Palermo Astronomical Observatory, and completed the Astronomical Observatory of Capodimonte in Naples. His most famous discovery was the first dwarf planet, Ceres. He also supervised the compilation of the Palermo Catalogue of stars, containing 7,646 star entries with unprecedented precision, including the star named “Garnet Star” by William Herschel, and the original Rotanev and Sualocin. The star system 61 Cygni is sometimes still called “Piazzi's Flying Star”.
Giovanni Battista Amici (1786-1863)
Amici was an Italian astronomer, microscopist and botanist. His name is best known for the improvements he effected in the mirrors of reflecting telescopes and especially in the construction of the microscope. He busied himself not only with astronomical subjects, such as the double stars, the satellites of Jupiter and the measurement of the polar and equatorial diameters of the sun, but also with biological studies of the circulation of the sap in plants, the fructification of plants, infusoria etc. He was the first to observe the pollen tube. He also invented the dipleidoscope and the direct vision prism. The crater Amici on the Moon is named in his honour.
Giovanni Schiaparelli (1835-1910)
Italian astronomer and science historian. He worked with binary stars, discovered the asteroid 69 Hesperia, and demonstrated that the Perseids and Leonids meteor showers were associated with comets. He proved that the orbit of the Leonids meteor shower coincided with that of the Comet Tempel-Tuttle. These observations led the astronomer to formulate the hypothesis, subsequently proved to be very exact, that the meteor showers could be the trails of comets. He was also the first to realize that the concentric spheres of Eudoxus of Cnidus and Callippus were not to be taken as material objects, but only as part of an algorithm similar to the modern Fourier series.
Angelo Secchi (1818-1878)
Italian astronomer and Jesuit priest. He was a pioneer in astronomical spectroscopy, and was one of the first scientists to state authoritatively that the Sun is a star. He invented the Secchi disk, which is used to measure water transparency in oceans, lakes and fish farms. He also invented a Meteorograph for the convenient recording of several categories of weather data. The lunar crater Secchi and the Martian crater Secchi are both named after him, as is a main belt asteroid, 4705 Secchi.
Annibale De Gasparis (1819-1892)
De Gasparis was an Italian astronomer who discovered nine asteroids: 10 Hygiea, 11 Parthenope, 13 Egeria, 15 Eunomia, 16 Psyche, 20 Massalia, 24 Themis, 63 Ausonia, 83 Beatrix. In addition, he also independently discovered 14 Irene, which was incorrectly credited to the English astronomer John Russell Hind. The main-belt asteroid 4279 De Gasparis as well as the 30-kilometer lunar crater de Gasparis and the nearby 93-kilometer long fracture Rimae de Gasparis, are named in his honour.
Giovanni Battista Donati (1826-1873)
Italian astronomer. He was a pioneer in the spectroscopic study of the stars, the Sun, and comets. In his 1862 memoir "Intorno alle strie degli spettri stellari" he indicated the feasibility of a physical classification of the stars. Donati also used spectroscopy of comets to determine their physical composition. He discovered that the spectrum changed when a comet approached the Sun, and that heating caused it to emit its own light rather than reflected sunlight: he concluded that the composition of comets is, at least in part, gaseous.
Annibale Riccò (1844-1919)
Italian astronomer. During his career he performed research into sunspots, and he participated in four solar eclipse expeditions, leading the expeditions in 1905 and 1914. He discovered Ricco's Law, an important principle of vision science. The crater Ricco on the Moon is named after him, as is the asteroid 18462 Ricco.
Riccardo Giacconi (1931-2018)
Riccardo Giacconi was an Italian Nobel Prize-winning astrophysicist who laid down the foundations of X-ray astronomy. The Asteroid 3371 Giacconi is named in his honour.
Minor Italian Astronomers
Restoro d'Arezzo (13th century)
Italian monk, astronomer and cosmographic writer. His "Composizione del Mondo" was the first astronomical work to be written in the Italian language.
Campano da Novara or Campanus of Novara (c. 1220-1296)
Italian mathematician, astronomer and physician. He geometrically described the motions of the planets as well as their longitude. He also included instructions on building a planetary equatorium as well as its geometrical description. He also attempted to determine the time of each planet's retrograde motion. The crater Campanus on the Moon is named after him.
Giuseppe Biancani (1566-1624)
Italian astronomer, mathematician, selenographer and Jesuit priest. His works included studies on the natural phenomenon of the echo and on sundials, as well as a diagram of the Moon. The crater Blancanus on the Moon is named after him.
Mario Bettini (1582-1657)
Italian philosopher, mathematician, astronomer and Jesuit priest. The lunar crater Bettinus is named after him.
Giovanni Battista Baliani (1582-1666)
Italian mathematician, physicist and astronomer. He was the first to enunciate the law of acceleration of a body and to distinguish between mass and weight.
Cristoforo Borri (1583-1632)
Italian mathematician, astronomer, missionary and Jesuit priest. Borri made observations on the magnetic variation of the compass. He also drew up the first chart for the Atlantic and Indian Oceans showing the spots where the magnetic needle makes the same angles with the meridian, before Edmund Halley.
Gerolamo Sersale (1584-1654)
Italian astronomer, selenographer and Jesuit priest. He drew a fairly precise map of a full moon in July 1650. The lunar crater Sirsalis is named after him.
Francesco Sizzi (1585-1618)
Italian astronomer. He is credited with being the first to notice the annual movement of sunspots.
Giovanni Battista Zupi (c. 1589-1667)
Italian astronomer, mathematician and Jesuit priest. He was the first person to discover that the planet Mercury had orbital phases. His observations demonstrated that the planet orbited around the Sun. The crater Zupus on the Moon is named after him.
Giovanni Battista Odierna (1597-1660)
Italian astronomer, architect and Catholic priest. He was one of the first to compile a catalogue of comets, nebulae and star clusters. This catalogue contained some 40 entries, including at least 19 real and verifiable nebulous objects. Many of his discoveries were later incorrectly attributed to others, including Messier 47 and the Triangulum Galaxy.
Geminiano Montanari (1633-1687)
Italian astronomer, mathematician, inventor and economist. He is best known for his observation that the second-brightest star (Algol) in the constellation of Perseus varied in brightness. He drew an accurate map of the Moon using an ocular micrometer of his own making. He also made observations on capillarity and other problems in statics, and suggested that the viscosity of a liquid depended on the shape of its molecules. A crater on the Moon is named after him.
Francesco Bianchini (1662-1729)
Bianchini was an Italian philosopher and scientist who was secretary of the commission for the reform of the Gregorian Calendar, working on the method to calculate the astronomically correct date for Easter. He constructed an important meridian line in the Basilica of Santa Maria degli Angeli e dei Martiri in Rome for calculating the position of the sun and stars. Craters on Mars and the Moon are named in his honour.
Giacomo Filippo Maraldi (1665-1729)
Italian astronomer and mathematician. His most famous astronomical discovery was that the ice caps on Mars are not exactly on the rotational poles of that body. He also recognized that the corona visible during a solar eclipse belongs to the Sun not to the Moon, and he discovered R Hydrae as a variable star. He is also credited for the first observation (in 1723) of what is usually referred to as Poisson's spot. In mathematics he is most known for obtaining the angle in the rhombic dodecahedron shape in 1712, which is still called the Maraldi angle. Craters on the Moon and Mars were named in honour of him and his nephew Giovanni Domenico Maraldi.
Giovanni Domenico Maraldi (1709-1788)
Italian astronomer. He discovered globular clusters M15 and M2. The lunar crater Maraldi was named after him and his uncle Giacomo Filippo Maraldi.
Domenico Troili (1722-1792)
Italian astronomer and Jesuit priest. He is recognized as the first person who documented the fall of a meteorite, in 1766.
Barnaba Oriani (1752-1832)
Italian scientist, astronomer, geodesist and Catholic priest. He made considerable research in the areas of astronomic refraction, the obliquity of the ecliptic and orbital theory. His greatest achievement was his detailed research of the planet Uranus.
Niccolò Cacciatore (1770-1841)
Italian astronomer and meteorologist. His most notable observation was the discovery of globular cluster NGC 6541.
Giovanni Antonio Amedeo Plana (1781-1864)
Italian astronomer and mathematician. Considered one of the premiere Italian scientists of his age. His contributions included work on the motions of the Moon, as well as integrals, (including the Abel–Plana formula), elliptic functions, heat, electrostatics, and geodesy. The crater Plana on the Moon is named in his honour.
Francesco de Vico (1805-1848)
Italian astronomer and a Jesuit priest. He found a remarkable number of comets in a relatively short time, including periodic comets 54P/de Vico-Swift-NEAT and 122P/de Vico. He also independently discovered the comet that brought fame to Maria Mitchell as "Miss Mitchell's Comet", two days after she did. Since the news had not yet reached Europe (nor De Vico), the comet was initially named after him. For this he received an award for the first comet discovered through a telescope. He also made observations of Saturn and the gaps in its rings, being the first to see the narrow division in the rings of Saturn now known as the Keeler Gap. The lunar crater De Vico and the asteroid 20103 de Vico are named after him.
Alessandro Serpieri (1823-1885)
Italian scientist known for work in astronomy and seismology. Serpieri's chief merits as an astronomer rest in the observation of shooting stars. In August 1850 he discovered that the August meteors originate in a radiant not far removed from Gamma Persei. His studies helped Giovanni Schiaparelli in the formulation of his theory on shooting stars. The asteroid 70745 Aleserpieri was named after him.
Antonio Abetti (1846-1928)
Italian astronomer. In 1874 he was part of an expedition led by Pietro Tacchini to observe a transit of Venus with a spectroscope. He also observed as many as 121 comets and 798 planets. The crater Abetti on the Moon and the minor planet 2646 Abetti are named in honor both him and his son Giorgio Abetti
Elia Millosevich (1848-1919)
Elia Filippo Francesco Giuseppe Maria Millosevich was an Italian astronomer who specialized in calculating the orbits of comets and asteroids, in particular 433 Eros. He discovered the astroids 303 Josephina and 306 Unitas. The main-belt asteroid 69961 Millosevich is named in his memory.
Vincenzo Cerulli (1859-1927)
Italian astronomer. He observed Mars and developed the theory that the Martian canals were not real but an optical illusion, a theory that was later confirmed. He also discovered one asteroid: 704 Interamnia. The Martian crater Cerulli as well as the asteroids 366 Vincentina and 31028 Cerulli are named in his honour.
Giorgio Abetti (1882-1982)
Italian solar astronomer. He is noted for having led expeditions to observe solar eclipses to Siberia (1936) and Sudan (1952). The crater Abetti on the Moon and asteroid 2646 Abetti are named in honor both him and his father Antonio Abetti.
Paolo Maffei (1926-2009)
Italian astrophysicist and astronomer. He was one of the pioneers of infrared astronomy research. He discovered two galaxies through infrared analysis. The two galaxies were named after him: Maffei-1 and Maffei-2.
Paul G. Comba (1926-2017)
Italian computer scientist, mathematician and astronomer. He is credited with the discovery of 685 minor planets.
Luciano Tesi (b. 1931)
Italian veterinarian and astronomer. He is credited with the discovery of 190 minor planets. The near-Earth object and Amor asteroid 15817 Lucianotesi is named in his honour.
Vittorio Goretti (1939-2016)
Italian teacher and astronomer. He is credited with the discovery of 32 main-belt asteroids. The main-belt asteroid 7801 Goretti is named in his honour.
Vincenzo Silvano Casulli (1944-2018)
Silvano Casulli was an Italian amateur astronomer who is credited with the discovery of 192 minor planets. He was the first amateur astronomer to obtain precise astronometric positions of minor planets using a CCD camera. The inner main-belt asteroid 7132 Casulli is named in his honour.
Giovanni de Sanctis (b. 1949)
Italian astronomer. He is credited with the discovery of 42 minor planets. The Vestian asteroid 3268 De Sanctis was named in his honour.
Augusto Testa (b. 1950)
Italian astronomer. He is credited with the discovery of 31 minor planets.
Maura Tombelli (b. 1952)
Italian astronomer. She is a prolific discoverer of almost 200 minor planets, including the main-belt asteroid 7794 Sanvito. She is known as the only Italian female astrometrist. She contributed to the discovery of 15817 Lucianotesi, the first NEO found from Italy. The main-belt asteroid 9904 Mauratombelli is named in her honour.
Piero Sicoli (b. 1954)
Italian astronomer. He is credited with the discovery of 43 minor planets. The Nysa asteroid 7866 Sicoli is named in his honour.
Ulisse Munari (b. 1960)
Italian astronomer. He is credited with the discovery of 49 minor planets. The asteroid 7599 Munari is named in his honour.
Francesco Manca (b. 1966)
Italian astronomer. He is credited with the discovery of 26 minor planets. The Koronian asteroid 15460 Manca is named in his honour.
Andrea Boattini (b. 1969)
Italian astronomer. He is a prolific discoverer of 298 minor planets and 25 comets. Asteroid 8925 Boattini is named in his honour.
Gianluca Masi (b. 1972)
Italian astrophysicist and astronomer. He is credited with the discovery of 26 minor planets. He also started the Virtual Telescope project, enabling more than 1 million individuals each year to observe the sky in real-time over the Internet. The Nysian asteroid 21795 Masi is named in his honour.
