Giovanni Antonio Magini

Giovanni Antonio Magini (in Latin, Maginus ) (Padoue, June 13rd 1555 - Bologna, February 11th 1617) was an astronomer, an astrologer, a cartographer, a mathematician and an academic Italy N.

Biography

His/her father was Pasquale Magini, a citizen of Padoue, his birthplace. He followed studies in Philosophie to Bologna in 1579.
Se devoting then to astronomy, it wrote in 1582 Ephemerides coelestium motuum , translated the following year into Italian.

In 1588, it was selected in front of Galileo to occupy the pulpit of Mathématiques of the Université of Bologna after the death of Egnatio Danti. Magini supported a geocentric vision of the world, a contrario of the emergent heliocentric system of Copernic. Magini conceived its own planetary theory, preferring it with other what exists. The system of Magini was composed of eleven revolving spheres, which it described in Novæ congruent cœlestium orbium theoricæ cum observationibus NR. Copernici (Venice, 1589).

In De Planis Triangulis (Venice, 1592), it was interested in the use of the quadrant S in the Topographie and in the Astronomie. In 1592, Magini published Tabula tetragonica and in 1606, it designed trigonometrical tables extremely precise. He also worked on the geometry of the sphere and his applications to trigonometry, for which he invented devices calculators. He also worked on the problem of the Miroir S and he published on the theory of the concave spherical mirrors.

He also published a comment on Geographia of Ptolémée (Cologne, 1596).

As a cartographer, he worked all his life with the preparation of Italia or Atlante geografico of Italia (geographical Atlas of Italy), printed after his death by his son in 1620. It was conceived to include the charts of all the areas of Italy with the exact nomenclature and the historical notes.

It was also interested in the Métoposcopie and became in 1599, the official astrologer of the duke of Mantoue.

It corresponded with Tycho Brahe, Clavius, Abraham Ortelius and Johannes Kepler. Its correspondence was published in 1886 per Antonio Favaro.

He died in Bologna.

Homages

The lunar crater Maginus bears its name.

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