Evangelista Torricelli
1608 – 1647
Invented the barometer and explained atmospheric pressure.
A student of Galileo, Torricelli invented the barometer in 1643 by inverting a tube of mercury and recognizing that the atmosphere itself held the column up — the first measurement of air pressure and the first sustained vacuum.
The unit 'torr' honors him. The pressure and atmosphere calculators here begin with his tube of mercury and the realization that we live at the bottom of an ocean of air.
Portrait: a stylized blueprint-line rendering, not a photograph.
Contributions in the toolbox
- 1643
Mercury barometer — pressure measured as a column height.
→ Pressure Converter - 1643
The barometer — pressure measured as fluid height.
→ Pump Head ⇄ Pressure - 1644
Efflux law — the √ in the formula.
→ Orifice Flow