Accademia del Cimento

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The Accademia del Cimento (Academy of Experiment), an early scientific society, was founded in Florence 1657 by students of Galileo, Evangelista Torricelli and Vincenzo Viviani. The foundation of Academy was funded by Prince Leopoldo and Grand Duke Ferdinando II de' Medici. Giovanni Borelli and Nicolaus Steno were also members. The tenets of the society included¹:

Experimentation (about everything, in this early period of science)
Avoidance of speculation
Creation of laboratory instruments
Standards of measurement
A publication Saggi di naturali esperienze fatte nell' Academia del cimento Florence 1666, later translated into Latin 1731. It became the standard laboratory manual in the 1700s.

While there was no formal procedure for joining the society, Francesco Redi, Lorenzo Magalotti (the Secretary), Vincenzo Viviani, Giovanni Alfonso Borelli, Carlo Renaldini, and others regularly attended its meetings. These were usually held in the Palazzo Pitti. Members performed numerous experiments, mainly in the fields of thermometry, barometry, and pneumatics, using purpose-built instruments.

The academy was discontinued after ten years.

External link

[Notes on the history of Accademia del Cimento from the Scholarly Societies Project, University of Waterloo Libraries] -- includes information about the Academy's publications.

Notes

Note 1: pp. 17-18, Leonard C. Bruno 1989, The Landmarks of Science. First editions from the collections of the Library of Congress. ISBN 0-8160-2137-6

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