Evangelista Torricelli

Hello! My name is Evangelista Torricelli. I was born in a beautiful town in Italy on October 15th, 1608. When I was a boy, I didn't just see grass and trees; I saw shapes and numbers everywhere! The world felt like one big, exciting puzzle that I wanted to solve. I loved math and science more than anything, so I went to school to learn as much as I could about how the world works.

I looked up to a very famous scientist named Galileo Galilei. He studied the stars and how things move. I was so excited when, in 1641, I was invited to be his assistant! It was a dream come true. Galileo was old and couldn't see very well anymore, but his mind was still brilliant. I helped him with his work until he passed away. After that, I was given his important job as the court mathematician, which was a great honor.

I had a big question I wanted to answer: Does the air all around us have weight? It feels like nothing, but I thought it must be pushing down on us. In 1643, I did a special experiment. I took a long glass tube, filled it with a heavy, silvery liquid called mercury, and turned it upside down in a bowl of more mercury. Some of the liquid slid down, but not all of it! This showed that the weight of the air was pushing on the mercury in the bowl, holding up the mercury inside the tube. The empty space at the top of the tube became known as a vacuum. I had just invented the barometer!

I lived to be 39 years old, and in that time, I was so happy to solve some of the world's puzzles. My invention, the barometer, changed how we understand the world. It showed that we live at the bottom of an ocean of air! Today, barometers are still used to help people forecast the weather, so they know if a sunny day or a big storm is coming. I hope my curiosity inspires you to ask big questions, too.