Montanari was born in
Modena on June 1, 1633. The son of Giovanni Montanari and Margherita Zanasi, he was left fatherless at age ten. Montanari began his studies in Modena. At twenty he went to
Florence to study
law; he remained there for 3 years. In Florence he participated in the observations of the phases of
Saturn made after the publication of
Huygens'
Systema Saturnium. In 1656 Montanari left Florence and moved to
Salzburg,
Austria, where he took a
law degree in the same year. Thanks to the influence of
Paolo del Buono, one of
Galileo's last direct disciples and Florentine
diplomat at the imperial court, he pursued the mathematical studies begun in Modena at the age of thirteen. At the beginning of 1661 Montanari became court philosopher and mathematician in Modena. In the meantime the Modenese scientist had made acquaintance with Marquis
Cornelio Malvasia, an influential senator and patron of science of Bologna who had built in his country house near Modena an astronomical
observatory. Montanari helped Malvasia to complete his
Ephemerides (Modena, 1662) and, after the death of
Alfonso d'Este in July 1662, he left the court of Modena and pursued his astronomical studies and observations thanks to the patronage of the marquis. Malvasia also managed to get his protégé a chair of mathematics at the
University of Bologna, to which Montanari was appointed by the Senate in December 1664. Montanari lectured in the afternoon chair while the Bolognese
Pietro Mengoli, a renowned disciple of
Cavalieri and a parish priest, occupied the morning chair. A third mathematical lectureship was held by
Giovanni Domenico Cassini, a close friend of Montanari's. In
Bologna Montanari drew an accurate map of the
Moon using an
ocular micrometer of his own making. He also made observations on
capillarity and other problems in
statics, and suggested that the
viscosity of a liquid depended on the shape of its
molecules. In 1665 Montanari organized the Accademia della Traccia, the precursor to the Accademia degli Inquieti and the
Academy of Sciences of the Institute of Bologna. The academy was established the year after Montanari's call to the University, and in the first two years of activity it met at the house of a Bolognese patrician, the Abbot Carlo Antonio Sampieri. From about 1667-1668 to 1677, the meetings were held at Montanari's home. Montanari was a keen astronomical observer, as demonstrated by the observations he made of the
meteor that crossed the sky of central Italy on 21 March 1676 or those of the
comet of 1682, the same observed by
Edmond Halley. Montanari's observations of the great comet of 1680 are mentioned twice in the third volume of
Newton's Principia. Montanari published several tracts intended to discredit astrological prognostication. In 1675, he perpetrated a deliberate hoax by writing an astrological almanac entirely at random, to show that predictions made by chance were as likely to be fulfilled as those made by astrology. In the period shortly after
Galileo Galilei,
experimentalists like Montanari were engaged in a battle against the more mystical views of
scientists such as Donato Rossetti, a pupil of
Borelli. Montanari, on the contrary, drew a clear line of metaphysical neutrality, based on a sharp distinction between
metaphysics and
natural philosophy. In July 1678 Montanari was appointed to the new Paduan chair of astronomy and
meteorology. Almost all records of this period of his life have been lost. A letter survives from 1682 recording a sighting of
Halley's Comet. He also wrote on
economics, observing that demand for a particular commodity was fixed, and making comments on coinage and the value of money (1683). Montanari was a close friend of the architect
Guarino Guarini. In 1678 Guarini helped organize Montanari's debate with the latter's archenemy Donato Rossetti in
Turin. A
crater on the Moon, at 45.8S, 20.6W, is named after him. ==Economic works and theories==