Gian Rinaldo Carli

Capodistrian Astronomer and a Relative of Alma Karlin from Celje

Abstract

The erudite Celje native, Alma Karlin, was always proud of her Koper ancestry, certainly above all of Gian Rinaldo Carli, who married wealth and touched the clouds in Padua, Venice and Milan. Alma and Gian Rinaldo were some of the greatest travelers worldwide, although Alma traveled in reality, while her venerable relative Carli, above all, journeyed with a goose quill pen on paper. Gian Rinaldo Carli is ranked among the leading astronomers and inspired thinkers of Northern Italy and today's Littoral region. Capodistrian Count Carli learned about modern astronomy in the early stages of his studies in Padua, especially about the work of Newton and his friend, the “discoverer” of Halley's Comet, Edmond Halley. In his early thinking about the Argonauts, he relied on Newton and Halley’s computations of the movement of the constellations and the concomitant time period during which the Argonauts, in their ship the Argo, apparently traveled through our territory and especially through Carli's home of Istria. As a Paduan professor of astronomy, Carli was the first professional astronomer from the present-day Slovenia territory and made an important contribution to the astronomical science for maritime orientation. As a teacher and reformer in Lombardy, he successfully advocated the introduction of astronomy to advanced classes in Pavia and Milan. The article describes Carli's links with the leading astronomers of his time, such as the Frenchmen de la Hire and Cassini, or the first head of the Greenwich Observatory, John Flamsteed.