Campo Santo, piazza del Duomo

Interno Campo Santo Monumentale (L. Corevi, Comune di Pisa)

Science in the Campo Santo: There are many references to science, or rather, to Pisan scientists. Here is a small example.

Galileo Galilei (d.1642): the great genius was born in Pisa, but his death took place in Arcetri (Fi). His body rests in the Basilica of Santa Croce in Florence. The Campo Santo preserves the true lamp of Galileo Galilei, in the southern nave of the Aulla chapel: at the age of 17, Galileo was able to theorise that its oscillations remained constant, whatever the amplitude, thanks to the intervention of a force of the atmosphere, also constant. A first step towards Newtonian theories of gravity.
Leonardo Pisano, called Fibonacci (d.1242): the burial place of the great Pisan mathematician is not known, but his statue was placed here in his memory, located in the eastern wing , near the sarcophagus of the Muses. It is a work by Giuseppe Paganucci from 1859, not really appreciated by critics: 'the movement of the person appeared to us petty, the arms, especially the left one, overly joined to the torso and somewhat unnatural'. We can still see the damage of the Second World War, when the statue was in front of the Logge dei Banchi, in Lungarno. Thanks to his studies on Arabic numerals and geometric practices, Fibonacci is considered the greatest mathematician of the Middle Ages.
Andrea Vaccà Berlinghieri (1826 m): his sepulchre, created by Bertel Thorvaldsen, is located near the frescoes by Taddeo Gaddi, at the end of the southern wing. The name of the great scientist and surgeon is linked, together with that of his father Francesco, to the figure of Mary Shelley: their friendship was profitable for the young writer who wanted to attend their galvanism experiments, from which she took inspiration to modify some paragraphs of her masterpiece of Gothic literature Frankenstein.
Francesco Algarotti (d.1764): Ovidii aemulo, Newtonii Discipulo, Fredericus Magnus. He was a great enlightenment figure, poet, philosopher and greatest populariser of Newton’s discoveries. His literary scientific masterpiece is Newtonianism for the ladies, from 1737, a small and brilliant scientific popularisation work. Its large sepulchre, the work of Mario Antonio Tesi, opens the western wing.
Giacomo Barzellotti (d.1839): considered the father of forensic medicine in Italy. His most famous treatise, Forensic Medicine. According to the spirit of the civil and criminal laws in force in the governments of Italy (1818), revolutionised forensic medicine.
Ottaviano Fabrizio Mossotti (d.1863): one of the most beautiful sepulchres in the Campo Santo, the work of Giovanni Dupré who made the allegory of Astronomy, with the gaze lost in the cosmos. Mossotti was an astronomer, a scholar of molecular interactions and dielectrics (theories that opened the doors to the study of electromagnetic waves).
Antonio Pacinotti (d.1912): his tomb is located near the fresco Drunkenness of Noah, by Benozzo Gozzoli, northern wing. He was responsible for the first prototype of the modern dynamo.
Carlo Matteucci (d.1868): considered the precursor of electrochemistry and electrophysiology and the first to experiment with muscle current. His experiments on numerous torpedo specimens are famous.
Paolo Savi (d.1861): director of the Natural History Museum of Pisa, one of the oldest in the world, now housed in the Certosa di Pisa in Calci (PI). He was a great innovator in the field of taxidermy, or embalming of bodies, especially for the creation of dioramas that made it possible to see the shapes of animals, but also their behaviour and the environment in which they lived.