Geminiano Montanari (
June 1 1633-
October 13 1687) was an
Italian astronomer,
lens-maker, and proponent of the experimental approach to science.He is best known for his observation, made around 1667, that the second brightest star (called
Algol in
Arabic) in the constellation of
Perseus varied in brightness. It is likely that others had observed this effect before, but Montanari was the first named astronomer to record it. The star's names in Arabic,
Hebrew and other languages, all of which have a meaning of "
ghoul" or "
demon", simply that its unusual behaviour had long been recognised. In the Western world, earlier observers may have been inhibited from publishing by the insistence of the
Christian church that the
universe was immutable.
See more at Wikipedia.org...
Free Download Now!
