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Paolo dal Pozzo Toscanelli (1397 – 10 May 1482) was an Italian astronomer,〔, pp. 333–335〕 mathematician, and cosmographer. ==Life== Paolo dal Pozzo Toscanelli was born in Florence, the son of the physician Domenico Toscanelli. There is no precise information on his education and background. Gustavo Uzielli in 1894 claimed that Toscanelli studied at the University of Padua, but modern authors consider this pure conjecture.〔 Toscanelli is noted for his observations of comets. Among these was the comet of 1456; only named Halley's comet when Halley predicted its return in 1759. Thanks to his long life, his intelligence and his wide interests, Toscanelli was one of the central figures in the intellectual and cultural history of Renaissance Florence in its early years. His circle of friends included the architect of the Duomo, Filippo Brunelleschi, and the philosopher Marsilio Ficino; he knew Leon Battista Alberti, mathematician, writer and architect; and his closest friend was Cardinal Nicholas of Cusa, himself a wide-ranging intellect and early humanist, who dedicated two short mathematical works, both written in 1445, to Toscanelli, and made himself and Toscanelli the interlocutors in a dialogue entitled ‘On Squaring the Circle (De quadratura circuli) written in 1458. Toscanelli along with Nicholas of Cusa (Cusanus) appears to have belonged to a network of Florentine and Roman intellectuals who searched for and studied Greek mathematical works, along with Filelfo, George of Trebizond, and the humanist Pope Nicholas V, in company with Toscanelli’s friends Alberti and Brunelleschi. Around 1468 Toscanelli devised the gnomon still to be seen in the Cathedral of Santa Maria del Fiore in Florence : a bronze plate let into the dome high above the left transept, and a circular white marble slab let into the floor of the Cathedral, which records the summer solstice to a half-second, and which was then and subsequently used for centuries for other calculations such as the regular movement of the sun; effectively a Camera Obscura. In 1439, the Greek philosopher Gemistos Plethon, attending the Council of Florence, acquainted Toscanelli with the extensive travels, writings and mapping of the 1st century BC/AD Greek geographer Strabo, hitherto unknown in Italy. Nearly 35 years later, the Italian was to follow up this amplified knowledge. In 1474 Toscanelli sent a letter and a map to his Portuguese correspondent Fernão Martins, priest at the Lisbon Cathedral, detailing a scheme for sailing westwards to reach the Spice Islands and Asia. Fernão Martins delivered his letter to the King Afonso V of Portugal, in his court of Lisbon. The original of this letter was lost, but its existence is known through Toscanelli himself, who later transcribed it along with the map and sent it to Christopher Columbus, who carried them with him during his first voyage to the new world. Toscanelli had miscalculated the size of the earth which resulted in Columbus not realizing initially he had found a new continent. 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Paolo dal Pozzo Toscanelli」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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