Paolo Brenni (1954–2021)

Abstract

Paolo Brenni’s untimely passing in the night between December 3 and 4, 2021, caused such deep and widespread emotion as to make a serene reconstruction of his intense scientific career extremely difficult.1 The gratitude of his colleagues for the generosity with which he always shared his knowledge exacerbates the emptiness we feel around us. In any event, it would be impossible to produce an exhaustive biography by merely offering a chronological commentary on the massive bibliography of his scholarly writings, or by describing the countless collections of historical scientific instruments that he helped to reorganize, catalogue, and restore. Paolo’s intellectual qualities were truly inseparable from his physical presence. This exceptionally rare harmony between intellect and manual dexterity was the key to his unique ability to tackle the history of scientific instruments. Indeed, Paolo exercised his superb skills above all with his hands—assembling, taking apart, repairing, and restoring the most complex scientific instruments, whose origin and function he was nearly always able to figure out, as in a conjuring trick. This outstanding