64 Borelli and the Influence [lect. 



provincial characters. Coming to Pisa he was plunged at once 

 into the most polished life of the times. And there is a story 

 that at the introductory lecture which against his will he was 

 induced to give upon entering into office, his clumsy diction, 

 his rude gestures, his long-winded and yet halting sentences 

 were so little to the taste of his fastidious audience that they 

 broke out into derisive laughter and brought the lecture to a 

 premature close. 



In spite of this Borelli soon made his power felt. Though 

 his chief duty was to teach mathematics, he threw himself with 

 zeal also into other kinds of learning. Malpighi, as we shall 

 presently see, came from Bologna to Pisa at the close of the 

 year of Borelli's arrival. The two at once became close friends, 

 and anatomy soon occupied Borelli's energies almost as much 

 as mathematics and physics. By his talents and energy he 

 made the university of Pisa famous as a school for both mathe- 

 matical and medical science, and his efforts in these directions 

 were generously supported by the munificence of the Medici. 

 It was perhaps chiefly through Borelli's unwearied activity in 

 advancing by way of experiment natural knowledge of all kinds 

 that in 1657, under the patronage of Prince Leopold, the famous 

 Academia del Cimento, one of the first of learned societies, 

 was instituted. Borelli, Malpighi, and the sagacious naturalist 

 Redi formed a trio which would have been an ornament to any 

 academy. But the Cimento was not all union. Borelli's in- 

 tellectual gifts lacked the support of an amiable character ; he 

 was morose and quarrelsome, tenacious of his own right, not 

 unenvious of the success of others, and apt when contradicted 

 or opposed to fly into a passion ; some of his contemporaries 

 speak of him as almost unbearable. He was more than once 

 led into a quarrel with his colleagues of the Academy, and 

 eventually became estranged even from Malpighi, who looked 

 upon him as a father, and who while they were at Pisa together 

 sought counsel of him almost every day. 



During these years Borelli published not only mathematical 

 works, such as his Euclides restitutus, and astronomical works, 

 for at Florence during the summer when freed from the duty 

 of lecturing he under the patronage of the Medici made 



