Domenico Guglielmini (1655-1710) was an Italian mathematician. In 1686 he was nominated “general intendant of the waters” in the Bologna area. Thanks to the fame he gained through hydraulic works, in 1694 Gugliemini obtained the chair in hydrometry at the University of Bologna. This book, first published in 1697, is considered his masterpiece. It discusses the nature of rivers and their parts, the motion of water, estuaries and confluents, riverbanks, and the kind of materials carried by rivers. The use of Italian (instead of Latin) demonstrates Guglielmini's intention to circulate the text among a relatively wide audience, which could appreciate the public usefulness of his researches. What is presented here is the second edition of the treatise, with the annotations of Eustachio Manfredi, who was Gugliemini's successor in the office of “general intendant of the waters” in Bologna.
Giacomo Ciamician (1857-1922) was a pioneer in the study of photochemical reactions and their applications. However, at the time, the light sources in the scientific laboratories were too weak to conduct meaningful experiments. He therefore had to use sunlight for his researches. To this end, he used a terrace of the Institute of Science of the University of Bologna. In this picture, dating from the first decade of the 20th century, he inspects the flasks that contained the organic substances whose light induced transformations he wanted to study together with his friend and collaborator Paul Silber (1851-1932).
