Inspirational Bath

Some people look at a bath as a time to sit back and relax...but not Sicilian mathematician Archimedes. Indeed, nothing beats a warm and relaxing bath for putting thoughts in order.

The founder of many mathematical principles is rumored to have discovered the law of specific gravity while in the bathtub. This claim is supported through the works of one of Archimedes' third century BC contemporaries Plutarch.

Plutarch wrote of Archimedes' evident passion for geometry even as the mathematician bathed: "...and while [his servants] were anointing him with oils and sweet savours, with his fingers he drew lines upon his naked body, so far was he taken from himself, and brought into ecstasy or trance, with the delight he had in the study of geometry."

Italy has a rich history of providing a backdrop for some of mankind's most famous inventors and innovators. Those include mathematicians and scientists like Archimedes and Galileo Galilei as well as explorers like Columbus and Vespucci whose discoveries changed the course of the modern world.

Nearly eighteen hundred years after Archimedes dreamed of math equations from his bath, the scientist Galileo Galilei taught young Italian males physics at Padua University. You can visit the university, founded in 1222, where Galilei's original lectern remains on display. Incidentally, the university became one of the European centers for science during the Renaissance.

Images from the Galileo satellite's mission

Dispelling Church doctrine, Galilei was the first to prove that the earth revolved around the sun. Though he was convicted of heresy in 1633, his theory was correct and his work is acknowledged today, almost four hundred years later. In 1989, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) launched a satellite named Galileo, which has since conducted more than fifteen orbits of Jupiter.

While Galileo made his hypotheses known before any modern scientific instruments even existed, thirty years after being convicted of heresy, Domenico Cassini, a professor of astronomy at Bologna University invented the telescope. In 1665, Cassini traced the meridian line. Like Galileo, NASA has honored Cassini, after whom a space exploration satellite has been named.

In 1801, Alessandro Volta made an important presentation to Napoleon. Volta had realized that a frogs' legs moved when an electric current ran through them. Accordingly, he gathered together a pile of metal discs and touched them with acid, thus creating the electric battery. This pile produced a steady stream of electricity. In his honor, the unit of electric potential (volt) was named in his honor.

An invention that shaped the world's ability to communicate came from Guglielmo Marconi in 1901. Marconi invented the first practical system for sending and receiving radio signals. It was in 1901 that Marconi picked up a signal in England that had originated in Newfoundland.

In more modern times, Italy has been home to numerous Nobel Prize winners. Enrico Fermi was born in Rome in 1901. Twenty-five years later, he began teaching at the University of Rome. In 1938, Fermi won the Nobel Prize for Physics by presiding over the first controlled nuclear chain reaction. After his success in Italy, Fermi left for the America, named for one of his Italian forefathers, and built the world's first nuclear reactor for producing power at the University of Chicago.

Besides scientists and mathematicians, Italy also has fostered explorers whose fame span the globe to which they have contributed so much, literally lending their names to much of the western hemisphere.

American children are often taught the rhyme that "In 1492, Columbus sailed the ocean blue..." While Columbus sailed from Spain, he is originally from the northeast part of Italy in Genoa. The famed explorer does not have a continent named after him, but one of his contemporaries does.

The man after whom America is named, Amerigo Vespucci, is also of Italian descent. Vespucci was the first to establish that the so-called New World was a separate land mass from Europe. Though he did not discover the "New World," a pamphlet incorrectly credited the discovery to him. Because of the error, in 1507 the "New World" was named "America"...but the correction was never made.

Italy's longstanding tradition of innovators and explorers has greatly changed the world, not only in textbooks, but in geography and ideas. In Italy, you can visit the birthplaces and other landmarks important in the lives of the country's greatest inventors. And while we do not know how many of these innovators brainstormed in the bath, we do know they changed the world in some way.