Leonardo on the Nature of Water

Mikhail A. MOGILEVSKY

The currently extant scientific heritage of the greatest universal genius in the human history, Leonardo da Vinci (1452—1519), contains approximately 7,000 pages of manuscripts. Specialists estimate it as only 25—30 percent of the legacy left by the Great Florentine to his pupil, Francesco Melzi. Leonardo planned to publish materials in several research fields; he composed detailed plans for these publications, reconsidered and rewrote them several times. Leonardo’s Codex Hammer (now in Bill Gates collection) includes the plan of the “Book of Water” consisting of 15 parts: water in itself, the nature of the bottoms, things moving in it, canals, machines set in motion by water, etc. Here we will describe only some of Leonardo’s achievements in his basic research on the nature of water and their applications...

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