BORELLI, GIOVANNI ALFONSO(b. Naples, Italy, January 1608; d. Rome, Italy, 31 December 1679), astronomy, epidemiology, mathematics, physiology (iatromechanics), physics, volcanology.

Borelli is not as widely known or appreciated as perhaps he should be. What reputation he has is based upon his mechanics, including celestial mechanics, and his physiology or iatromechanics. The former, unfortunately, was quickly and completely overshadowed by the work of Isaac Newton; and his iatromechanics, although important and influential, was too much informed by what proved to be a relatively sterile systematic bias to bear much immediate fruit. Accordingly historians have undervalued his place in the development of the sciences in the seventeenth century, and they have paid little attention to his career or his personality. (There has been no lengthy treatment of his life since the eighteenth century, and important and elementary biographical information is still hard to come by.) But he was highly respected by his contemporaries. He read widely, and he drew his scientific inspiration from a broad spectrum of the heroes and near-heroes of the early seventeenth century: such men as Galileo Galilei, William Harvey, Johannes Kepler, and Santorio Santorio. He worked on many problems, contributed significantly to all the topics he touched, and in fact played an important part in establishing and extending the new experimental-mathematical philosophy. He was brilliant enough scientifically to be very much ahead of his time, even if he was not quite brilliant enough nor free enough from other commitments to produce general synthetic solutions in his fields of interest which would be either successful or entirely convincing.

During the century prior to Borelli's birth, Italians had been in the forefront of the late Renaissance effort to translate and master the Alexandrian astronomers, mathematicians, and physiologists. By the end of that century many had learned all they could from the past and had begun to strike out on their own. Galileo's telescopic discoveries only dramatically underscored the fact that major innovations were underway in all fields of natural philosophy. And they also indicated that the Italians could be expected to continue playing a leading role in these new enterprises. But during Borelli's lifetime the world saw Galileo condemned for his innovations, the Lincei persecuted, the Cimento disbanded, and the Investiganti of Naples suspended. It also saw the death, in the decade of the 1640's, of many of Galileo's most talented disciples: Benedetto Castelli, Bonaventura Cavalieri, Vincenzo Renieri, and Evangelista Torricelli. Borelli's Italy rejoiced over the conversion of Queen Christina of Sweden and perhaps was as much interested in the fact of Nicholas Steno's conversion as in his scientific accomplishments. Moreover, it was a politically fragmented Italy, portions of which were absorbed in struggles to throw off oppressive foreign domination. And later on its best investigators, for example, Marcello Malpighi and Gian Domenico Cassini, had to find recognition and support north of the Alps. In sum, the new philosophy faced distracting competition and even open hostility from several quarters, and in the long run the Italians could find neither the wherewithal nor the enthusiasm to support science in the ways it was beginning to be supported elsewhere. Borelli's career, then, is an illuminating record of an original scientist who was also politically active in Counter-Reformation Italy. Borelli himself ended his life in political exile in Rome—poverty stricken, teaching elementary mathematics.

Borelli's birth was not auspicious. As part of their rule of southern Italy at the turn of the century, the Spanish maintained military garrisons in the three principal fortresses of Naples. On 28 January 1608, a Spanish infantryman, Miguel Alonso, stationed at Castel Nuovo, witnessed the baptism of his first son, Giovanni Francesco Antonio. The mother was a local woman by the name of Laura Porrello (variously spelled in the records as porrello, porrella, borrella, borriello, borrelli). The couple went on to have one daughter and four more sons, including a Filippo baptized 9 March 1614. In later years both Giovanni and Filippo used Borelli as a family name; Giovanni dropped two of his baptismal names but retained an