Francesco Bianchini
Francesco Bianchini ( Latinized Franciscus Blanchinus; born December 13, 1662 at Verona, † March 2, 1729 in Rome ) was an Italian philosopher, astronomer and archaeologist.
Bianchini worked for the Curia under four popes, including as Secretary of the Commission to improve the calendar and worked on the method to calculate the correct date for Easter in a given year. He was educated at the Jesuit College in Verona, studied since 1680 at Padua theology, philosophy, mathematics and physics in Rome since 1684 especially Roman archeology. Pope Alexander VIII gave him a rich benefice, and Clement XI. appointed him Secretary of the Commission in charge of the calendar improvement. His father Verona erected to him in the cathedral there is a marble monument. His biography wrote Mazzaloni (Verona 1735).
He has published many books, including a universal history and Hesperi et Phosphoric nova Phenomena immersive observationes about planetam Veneris, in which he derived a rotation period of the observation of the surface of Venus. Today we know that this is impossible because of the strong cloud cover on this planet. He also worked on the parallax of Venus, and he measured the mass of the precession of the rotational axis.
As part of its efforts to improve the accuracy of the calendar, Bianchini constructed some important lunch lines, means for calculating the position of the sun and the stars. The most notable are in the cathedral church of San Petronio in Bologna and in the Basilica of Santa Maria degli Angeli and the Martyrs in Rome.
Craters on Mars and the Moon are named after him.
Works
- Storia universale, provata co ' monumenti, e figurata co' simboli degli antichi Rome in 1697 and 1747
- De vitis Romanorum Pontificum a Petro Apost. ad Nicolaum I. Rome 1718-35, 4 vols
- Hesperi et Phosphoric nova Phenomena immersive observationes about planetam Veneris Rome 1728