> Thanks for the material on the Jews in Cochin. It is appreciated.
> I will be trying to access the Jewish Encyclopedia at the British
> Library, but in the meantime can you tell me if it mentions anything
> about the places that Delmedigo visited in his wandering life and
> during which years he studied in Padua under Galileo.
> Further do you know of any of the Historia Matematica group who are
> from the University of Padua? I need to talk to someone over there.
Sorry, I cannot help locate anyone at Padua. Maybe someone else on the
mailing list can?
I'm sure you can find the Jewish Encyclopedia somewhere closer than the
British Library. It is considered a standard reference work, is widely
available here in the US, and was republished at least once, in the 1970's
by Ktav. It may even still be in print.
The Delmedigo family produced several noted scholars from Elijah Cretensis
ben Moses Abba (b 1460), who became a professor of philosophy at Padua,
to his descendant Joseph Solomon Delmedigo (1591-1655).
Checking both the Jewish Encyclopedia and H. Graetz, History of the Jews,
Jewish Publication Society translation, Philadelphia: 1895, we get the
following rough biography:
Born in Candia 16 June 1591.
Learned Latin and Greek as well as Hebrew. Entered the University of
Padua 1606; date left not given. At Padua was a student of Galileo.
Returned to Candia, where his freethinking and preference for secular
studies got him into trouble. Went to first Cairo and then Constantinople,
where he associated with the Karaites. Then moved through Wallachia and
Moldavia to Poland and eventually to Vilna in Lithuania, where he became
personal physician to Prince Radziwill about 1620. At Vilna a Karaite
named Zerah ben Nathan of Troki (also spelled Serach ben Nathan of Trok)
presented him with a list of questions on scientific topics. According
to Graetz, Delmedigo answered Zerah through an assistant and "mouth-piece"
named Moses Metz. Sometime after 1621 he moved to Hamburg, where a colony
of Portuguese Jews had settled.
Due to a plague he moved to Gluckstadt, and eventually travelled on to
Amsterdam in 1629, where his best known work "Elim" was published. Elim
appears to be largely Delmedigo's responses to Zerah (whom Graetz calls
"half-crazed").
About 1630 Delmedigo moved to Frankfort-on-the_main, then to Prague (about
1648-50), then Worms (1652), and finally back to Prague, where he died 16
October 1655.
Graetz considers Delmedigo to be a hypocrite and something of a sham.
A few choice comments: "His work [a defense of the Kaballah] was of the
kind to throw dust in the eyes of the ignorant multitude; it displayed a
smattering of learning on all sorts of subjects, but no trace of logic."
"[The Elim] was a work of truly Polish disorder, in which mathematical
theorems and scientific problems are discussed by the side of philosophical
and theological questions, in a confused way"
"Instead of publishing an encyclopaedic work which he boastfully said he
had composed in his earliest youth, and which embraced all sciences and
solved all questions, he produced a mere medley."
***************************************************************
I should point out that it is entirely possible that Dutch Gentiles in
the Dutch colony on the Malabar coast passed Indian mathematical works
on to other Dutch Gentiles back in the Netherlands.
Addenda:
A Web page from the National Library of Canada, URL
http://collection.nlc-bnc.ca/100/200/301/nlc/incunab-ef/echap9.htm
says:
<begin quote>
Joseph Solomon Delmedigo, of Candia (Crete), 1591-1655
[ Sefer Elim - Ma'yan Ganim ]
Amsterdam: Menasseh Ben Israel,
1628-1629.
These first published tracts of Delmedigo, a pupil of Galileo and a
Copernican, treat of plane and spherical geometry, symbolic algebra,
astronomy and astronomical instruments, chemistry, and the aphorism of
Hippocrates. This volume is the most sumptuously illustrated of early
scientific works in Hebrew, and unique in printed Hebrew literature
before the modern period.
<end quote>
and shows some illustrations.
References from the ubiquitous St. Andrews web sites
http://www-history.mcs.st-and.ac.uk/history/Bibliography/PQ.html
23.K G Poulose (ed.), Scientific heritage of India, mathematics
(Tripunithura, 1991).
28.S M Pulver, The syncopated mathematical works of Joseph Solomon
Delmedigo, Pi mu epsilon journal 9 (1990), 106-109.
- James A. Landau