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.
These bronze reliefs are a copy of the reliefs on the memorial for Jan Pieter Minckelers (1748-1824), erected in Maastricht in 1904 by sculptor Bart van Hove (1850-1914). Minckelers was a lecturer at the University of Leuven and in 1783, he succeeded in producing the very first lighting gas. The reliefs show how Minckelers, supported by the Duke of Arenberg, released the very first gas balloon in the Low Countries on the lawn in front of Arenberg Castle on 20 November 1783, and how already in the following year his own laboratory was illuminated with the technology. The artist donated the reliefs to the university at the inauguration of the statue in Maastricht.
