Speaker
Description
Why talk about Egnatio Danti in Perugia? Danti was an exemplary protagonist of the Renaissance homo faber and also author of important treatises on mathematics and optics. Carlo Pellegrino was born in Perugia in 1536 and changed his name to Egnatio when he entered the Dominican Order to take up the priesthood. As a boy with his aunt Teodora, he studied Mathematics, Geometry and Astronomy. Thanks to these studies he taught mathematics and science in Florence and Bologna, was a cosmographer and cartographer, and constructed many astronomical instruments for different types of measurements. It was he who mapped the first topography of the Perugia area and most probably was in contact with Girolamo della Volpaia, whose scientific instruments are well-known. For this and for many other reasons it is important to bring this fellow citizen of ours back to the forefront of science.
