Giovanni Battista Riccioli

Giovanni Battista Riccioli, SJ was an Italian astronomer and a Catholic priest in the Jesuit order. He is known, among other things, for his experiments with pendulums and with falling bodies, for his discussion of 126 arguments concerning the motion of the Earth, and for introducing the current scheme of lunar nomenclature. He is also widely known for discovering the first double star. He argued that the rotation of the Earth should reveal itself because on a rotating Earth, the ground moves at different speeds at different times.

17 April 1598

Born on the same birth day (17 April): Alice Harden • Bella Freud • Bud Paxson • Don Kirshner • Heidi Alexander • Hervé Bazin • Nisargadatta Maharaj • Peter Morris (surgeon) • Richard Field (judge) • Robert Dean Frisbie • Stanislav Chistov • Travis Roy • Yuichi Nishimura

Born in the same month (April 1598): Johann Crüger • Maarten Tromp