Fortunio Liceti

Fortunio Liceti (Latin: Fortunius Licetus; October 3, 1577 – May 17, 1657 ) was an Italian physician and philosopher.

Early life He was born prematurely at Rapallo, near Genoa to Giuseppe Liceti and Maria Fini, while the family was moving from Recco. His father was a doctor and created a makeshift incubator, thereby saving Fortunio. On August 25, 1609, he was given a professorship in philosophy at the University of Padua. The two remained friends after Galileo left Padua and from the period of October 22, 1610 to July 20, 1641, thirty-three letters from Liceti to Galileo survive, along with twelve from Galileo to Liceti (which would have been lost had Liceti not inserted them into his own published works). At the end of his 1653 work Hieroglyphica (1653), Liceti used this stone as analogy for the moon, believing that the moon released light absorbed by the sun, contrary to Galileo's argument in Sidereus Nuncius that the moon's illumination is caused by the reflection of sunlight from the earth.

In 1777, Marquis Carlo Spinelli erected a marble statue of Liceti in Padua on Prato della Valle sculpted by Francesco Rizzi.