Evangelista Torricelli

Evangelista Torricelli (15 October 1608 to 25 October 1647) was an Italian physicist and mathematician and a student of Benedetto Castelli. He was born in Rome to a poor family from Faenza, was educated in Faenza under the care of his uncle, a Camaldolese monk, and then at a Jesuit college, and from 1626 to 1632 he worked as secretary to Castelli, who taught mathematics at the Collegio della Sapienza and had himself been a student of Galileo Galilei. Torricelli is best known for his invention of the barometer, and he is also known for his advances in optics and his work on the method of indivisibles. The torr, a unit of pressure, is named after him.