La fortuna di Lucrezio a Padova nel secondo Cinquecento

The thesis deals with the reception of Lucretius' De rerum natura in the late Renaissance Italy. It focuses in particular on readings and commentaries of the Epicurean latin poem among scholars, physicians, lecturers and students at the University of Padua, the most important Italian university during the 16th century and one of the principal cultural centres in early modern Europe. With the support of manuscripts and unpublished documents, the thesis provides new evidences of the wide circulation of both Lucretius' work and Greek atomism in Padua before the arrival of Galileo as mathematician of the Studium and the commonly accepted real beginning of the scientific revolution.