Francesco Fontana (,

Naples Naples (; it, Napoli ; nap, Napule ), from grc, Νεάπολις, Neápolis, lit=new city. is the regional capital of Campania and the third-largest city of Italy, after Rome and Milan, with a population of 909,048 within the city's adminis ...

– July 1656, Naples) was an Italian lawyer and an

astronomer An astronomer is a scientist in the field of astronomy who focuses their studies on a specific question or field outside the scope of Earth. They observe astronomical objects such as stars, planets, natural satellite, moons, comets and galaxy, g ...

Biography

Francesco Fontana studied law at the

University of Naples The University of Naples Federico II ( it, Università degli Studi di Napoli Federico II) is a public university in Naples, Italy. Founded in 1224, it is the oldest public non-sectarian university in the world, and is now organized into 26 depar ...

and then he became a lawyer in the court at the

Castel Capuano Castel Capuano is a castle in Naples, southern Italy. It takes its name from the fact that it was at that point in the city walls where the road led out to the city of Capua. The castle is at the southwest end of via dei Tribunali, and until re ...

. But failing to always find truth in the Court, he began to study mathematics and astronomy. He created woodcuts lease add reference as there is no evidence that Fontana was an engravershowing the

Moon The Moon is Earth's only natural satellite. It is the fifth largest satellite in the Solar System and the largest and most massive relative to its parent planet, with a diameter about one-quarter that of Earth (comparable to the width of ...

and the

planets A planet is a large, rounded astronomical body that is neither a star nor its remnant. The best available theory of planet formation is the nebular hypothesis, which posits that an interstellar cloud collapses out of a nebula to create a young ...

as he saw them through a self-constructed

telescope A telescope is a device used to observe distant objects by their emission, absorption, or reflection of electromagnetic radiation. Originally meaning only an optical instrument using lenses, curved mirrors, or a combination of both to observe ...

. Fontana traced, in 1636, the first drawing of

Mars Mars is the fourth planet from the Sun and the second-smallest planet in the Solar System, only being larger than Mercury (planet), Mercury. In the English language, Mars is named for the Mars (mythology), Roman god of war. Mars is a terr ...

and discovered its

rotation Rotation, or spin, is the circular movement of an object around a '' central axis''. A two-dimensional rotating object has only one possible central axis and can rotate in either a clockwise or counterclockwise direction. A three-dimensional ...

. In February 1646 he published the book ''Novae coelestium terrestriumq ererum observationes, et fortasse hactenus non-vulgatae'', where he presented all the observations of the Moon made from 1629 until 1645, the drawings of the bands seen on Jupiter's disc, the strange appearances of

Saturn Saturn is the sixth planet from the Sun and the second-largest in the Solar System, after Jupiter. It is a gas giant with an average radius of about nine and a half times that of Earth. It has only one-eighth the average density of Earth; h ...

, as well as of the stars of the

Milky Way The Milky Way is the galaxy that includes our Solar System, with the name describing the galaxy's appearance from Earth: a hazy band of light seen in the night sky formed from stars that cannot be individually distinguished by the naked eye ...

. With a Fontana's telescope, the Jesuit

Giovanni Battista Zupi Giovanni Battista Zupi or ''Zupus'' (2 November 1589 – 26 August 1667) was an Italian astronomer, mathematician, and Jesuit priest. He was born in Catanzaro. In 1639, Giovanni was the first person to discover that the planet Mercury had or ...

observed for the first time in 1630 the horizontal bands on the atmosphere of

Jupiter Jupiter is the fifth planet from the Sun and the List of Solar System objects by size, largest in the Solar System. It is a gas giant with a mass more than two and a half times that of all the other planets in the Solar System combined, but ...

and in 1639 the phases of

Mercury Mercury commonly refers to: * Mercury (planet), the nearest planet to the Sun * Mercury (element), a metallic chemical element with the symbol Hg * Mercury (mythology), a Roman god Mercury or The Mercury may also refer to: Companies * Merc ...

, an evidence, together with the phases of Venus observed by

Galileo Galileo di Vincenzo Bonaiuti de' Galilei (15 February 1564 – 8 January 1642) was an Italian astronomer, physicist and engineer, sometimes described as a polymath. Commonly referred to as Galileo, his name was pronounced (, ). He was ...

in 1610, that the Copernicus's heliocentric theory was correct. In 1645, he claimed to have observed a satellite of Venus ( Paul Stroobant demonstrated in 1887 that all similar observations were not related to a putative satellite of Venus). He died of plague in

with the whole family in July 1656. The lunar crater Fontana and the crater Fontana on Mars are named in his honor.

Microscope

Fontana also claimed to have invented the compound microscope (two or more lenses in a tube) in 1618, an invention that has many claimants including

Cornelis Drebbel Cornelis Jacobszoon Drebbel ( ) (1572 – 7 November 1633) was a Dutch engineer and inventor. He was the builder of the first operational submarine in 1620 and an innovator who contributed to the development of measurement and control systems, op ...

Zacharias Jansen Zacharias Janssen; also Zacharias Jansen or Sacharias Jansen; 1585 – pre-1632) was a Dutch spectacle-maker who lived most of his life in Middelburg. He is associated with the invention of the first optical telescope and/or the first truly ...

or his father Hans Martens, and

Galileo Galilei Galileo di Vincenzo Bonaiuti de' Galilei (15 February 1564 – 8 January 1642) was an Italian astronomer, physicist and engineer, sometimes described as a polymath. Commonly referred to as Galileo, his name was pronounced (, ). He was ...

.
''A Practical treatise on the use of the microscope'' by John Thomas Quekett

References

Francesco Stelluti Francesco Stelluti (12 January 1577, in Fabriano – November 1652, in Rome) was an Italian polymath who worked in the fields of mathematics, microscopy, literature, and astronomy. Along with Federico Cesi, Anastasio de Filiis and Johannes van H ...

, ''Persio tradotto...'', Roma 1630, p. 47; *

Athanasius Kircher Athanasius Kircher (2 May 1602 – 27 November 1680) was a German Jesuit scholar and polymath A polymath ( el, πολυμαθής, , "having learned much"; la, homo universalis, "universal human") is an individual whose knowledge spans ...

, ''

Ars Magna Lucis et Umbrae ''Ars Magna Lucis et Umbrae'' ("The Great Art of Light and Shadow") is a 1646 work by the Jesuit scholar Athanasius Kircher. It was dedicated to Ferdinand IV, King of the Romans and published in Rome by Lodovico Grignani. A second edition was pu ...

'', Romae 1646, pp. 16, 831; *

Giovanni Battista Riccioli Giovanni Battista Riccioli, SJ (17 April 1598 – 25 June 1671) was an Italian astronomer and a Catholic priest in the Jesuit order. He is known, among other things, for his experiments with pendulums and with falling bodies, for his discussion ...

, ''Almagestum novum'', Bononiae 1651, pp. 203, 208, 485 ss.; * Lorenzo Crasso, ''Elogii de gli huomini letterati'', II, Venezia 1666, pp. 296–300; *

Christiaan Huygens Christiaan Huygens, Lord of Zeelhem, ( , , ; also spelled Huyghens; la, Hugenius; 14 April 1629 – 8 July 1695) was a Dutch mathematician, physicist, engineer, astronomer, and inventor, who is regarded as one of the greatest scientists of ...

, ''Oeuvres complétes'', I, La Haye 1888, ''ad Indicem''; * ''Edizione nazionale delle opere di Galileo Galilei'', XVII, pp. 192, 308, 363, 375, 383 s.; XVIII, pp. 18, 85; XX, p. 442; * ''Il carteggio linceo della vecchia Accademia di Federico Cesi'', a cura di Giuseppe Gabrieli, in ''Memorie della Reale Accademia nazionale dei Lincei'', classe di scienze morali storiche e filologiche, s. 6, VII (1942), pp. 1008, 1124, 1127, 1131, 1144 s., 1205; * ''Le opere dei discepoli di Galileo Galilei. Carteggio 1642–48'', a cura di Paolo Galluzzi, Maurizio Torrini, I, Firenze 1975, ''ad Indicem''; *

Marin Mersenne Marin Mersenne, OM (also known as Marinus Mersennus or ''le Père'' Mersenne; ; 8 September 1588 – 1 September 1648) was a French polymath whose works touched a wide variety of fields. He is perhaps best known today among mathematicians for ...

, ''Correspondance'', XV, Paris 1983, ''ad Indicem''; * Matteo Barbieri, ''Notizie istoriche dei mattematici e filosofi del Regno di Napoli'', Napoli 1778, pp. 134–138; * Pietro Napoli Signorelli, ''Vicende della coltura nelle due Sicilie'', V, Napoli 1786, pp. 222–225; * Luigi Maria Rezzi, ''Sull'invenzione del microscopio'', in ''Atti dell'Accademia Pontificia de' nuovi Lincei'', V (1852), pp. 108 ss.; * Antonio Favaro, ''Galileo e il telescopio di Francesco Fontana'', in ''Atti e memorie dell'Accademia di scienze lettere ed arti in Padova'', n.s., XIX (1903), pp. 61–71; * Gino Arrighi, ''Gli "occhiali" di Francesco Fontana in un carteggio inedito di A. Santini'', in Physis, VI (1964), pp. 432–448; * Giovanna Baroncelli, ''L'astronomia a Napoli al tempo di Galileo'', in ''Galileo e Napoli'', a cura di Fabrizio Lomonaco, Maurizio Torrini, Napoli 1987, pp. 197–225.

External links

''Novae coelestium ... observationes''
(1646, Latin) * 1580s births 1656 deaths 17th-century Italian astronomers Italian engravers Scientists from Naples {{Italy-astronomer-stub