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DUBROVNIK DIGEST >> Famous people
Famous people >> Marin Getaldić
Marin Getaldić
Marin Getaldic was a great mathematician from Dubrovnik and worked in optics and physics. The Italian scientist Buratin wrote that Dubrovnik had a telescope in Getaldic’s time, long before Newton's discovery. Getaldić’s name is linked with the telescope. His contributions to geometry have been cited by Christian Huygens and Edmond Halley. One of the most respected universities of the time, in the Belgian town of Leuven, offered him a professorship in mathematics, but he declined. It is interesting that many of his experiments conducted in Betina Cave (Bete was its nickname). In front of the cave he experimented with spherical and parabolic mirrors, watching the sky. Some people for that reason declared him a medicine man and an evil wizard.
