Niccolò Zucchi

Who was Niccolò Zucchi?

Niccolò Zucchi was an Italian Jesuit, astronomer, and physicist.

As an astronomer he may have been the first to see the belts on the planet Jupiter, and reported spots on Mars in 1640.

His "Optica philosophia experimentis et ratione a fundamentis constituta", published in 1652–56, described his 1616 experiments using a curved mirror instead of a lens as a telescope objective, which may be the earliest known description of a reflecting telescope. In his book he also demonstrated that phosphors generate rather than store light. He also published two other works on mechanics and machines.