Giambattista Benedetti

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Giambattista (Gianbattista) Benedetti (August 14, 1530 – January 20, 1590) was an Italian mathematician from Venice who wrote La gnomonica. He was a Copernican who determined that falling objects fall at the same rate in 1553, a discovery often credited to Galileo. This is called the "equality of fall rates."

In a letter to Cipriano de Rore dated from around 1563, Benedetti proposed a new theory of the cause of consonance, arguing that since sound consists of air waves or vibrations, in the more consonant intervals the shorter, more frequent waves concurred with the longer, more frequent waves at regular intervals. Isaac Beeckman and Marin Mersenne both adopted this theory in the next century. When they sought Descartes' opinion on Benedetti's theory, Descartes declined to judge the goodness of consonances by such a rational method. Descartes argued that the ear prefers one or another according to the musical context rather than because of any concordance of vibrations.[1]

In 1572, the Jesuit Jean Taisner published from the press of Johann Birkmann of Cologne a work entitled Opusculum perpetua memoria dignissimum, de natura magnetis et ejus effectibus, Item de motu continuo. This is considered a piece of plagiarism, as Taisnier presents, as though his own, the Epistola de magnete of Peter of Maricourt and a treatise on the fall of bodies by Benedetti.

[edit] Sources

• Dictionary of the History of Ideas
• Fall rates info
• Catholic Encyclopedia: Pierre de Maricourt