ACCADEMIA DEL CIMENTO. - A scientific society, founded in Florence on the initiative of Vincenzo Viviani among the disciples of Galileo, and inaugurated on 15 June 1657, under the auspices of Ferdinand II and Leopold de' Medici, who hosted it in a room adjoining his library in the grand-ducal palace. It set itself the search for truth by means of multiple and collective experiments; whence the choice of the "emblem": three crucibles, within a lighted furnace, and the Dantean motto: "Provando e riprovando".
The seriousness of its aims excluded the use of academic names and even of a statute; a draft of one, drawn up by the member Paolo Del Buono, was never applied. Besides Viviani and Del Buono, its members included Alessandro Marsili, Antonio Oliva, Carlo Rinaldini, Giovanni Alfonso Borelli, Candido del Buono, Francesco Redi and Count Lorenzo Magalotti. The corresponding members were: Cassini, Ricci, Rossetti and Falconieri, among the Italians; Steno, Thévenot and Fabry, among the foreigners. The work remained suspended from the end of 1657 to 1658 owing to the transfer of the grand-ducal court to Pisa, and was actively resumed only in 1660, extending also to astrophysics, especially through the work of Magalotti, who had assumed the office of secretary. In 1666, an accurate report of the Academy's studies and experiments by Magalotti himself was published under the title Saggi di naturali esperienze fatte nell'A. del C., which may be considered the first model of experimental research, the first practical course in physics. The Saggi (translated into English in 1684 by the scientist Richard Walter and into Latin by Pieter van Musschenbroek, Leiden 1731) and the 48 manuscript volumes preserved in the Nazionale of Florence demonstrate how the A. del C., in the brief period of 10 years, succeeded in renewing and expanding the physical, mathematical, astronomical and natural sciences.
In 1667 the dissensions that arose between Viviani and Borelli and above all the appointment as cardinal of Prince Leopold, the animator and guide of the society, marked the end of the Academy. Only in the early years of the 19th century, when Murat was at the head of the government of Tuscany, did the A. del C. revive for a single session (cf. Gazz. Universale di Firenze for the year 1801, nos. 21 and 28, pp. 166 and 207).
The activity of this Academy made experimental physics Tuscan, the study of which had been set in motion half a century earlier by the Roman Accademia dei Lincei (v.), in which Galileo and other distinguished Florentines had displayed frequent and admired industry.
Bibliography5 works
Silvio Pasquazi