Abstract
AT the University of Toronto on October 19, two meetings were held to commemorate the invention of the barometer by Torricelli, three hundred years ago. Last spring, the Canadian Branch of the Royal Meteorological Society decided that this important scientific event should be fittingly commemorated, and invited the Royal Astronomical Society of Canada, the Royal Canadian Institute, and the University of Toronto to join with it in making the arrangements, which were entrusted to a committee under the chairmanship of Mr. W. E. K. Middleton. At the afternoon meeting held in the West Hall of the University College, Prof. C. A. Chant was chairman, and presented to the meeting delegates from the Royal Society of Canada, the American Meteorological Society and the History of Science Society. The first formal paper, entitled “Telescope, Microscope, and Barometer as a Point of Departure for the Natural Sciences”, was delivered by Prof. Louis C. Karpinski, of the University of Michigan, president of the History of Science Society, who treated the discovery of the barometer as one phase, and an important one, of the scientific renaissance that took place in the sixteenth century. He was followed by Prof. G. S. Brett, of the University of Toronto, who dealt with the remarkable effect of the discovery on contemporary thought, particularly as it affected the relations between science and theology, and the ideas of the structure and properties of matter.
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Commemoration of the Invention of the Barometer. Nature 152, 718–719 (1943). https://doi.org/10.1038/152718c0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/152718c0