Paolo Maffei was an Italian

Italy

Italy , officially the Italian Republic languages]] under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages. In each of these, Italy's official name is as follows:;;;;;;;;), is a unitary parliamentary republic in South-Central Europe. To the north it borders France, Switzerland, Austria and...

 astronomer

Astronomy

Astronomy is a natural science that deals with the study of celestial objects and phenomena that originate outside the atmosphere of Earth...

 and science writer.

He was born in Foligno

Foligno

Foligno is an ancient town of Italy in the province of Perugia in east central Umbria, on the Topino river where it leaves the Apennines and enters the wide plain of the Clitunno river system...

 and he has been former director of the Catania Observatory and an astronomer

Astronomer

An astronomer is a scientist who studies celestial bodies such as planets, stars and galaxies.Historically, astronomy was more concerned with the classification and description of phenomena in the sky, while astrophysics attempted to explain these phenomena and the differences between them using...

 at Arcetri

Arcetri

Arcetri is a region of Florence, Italy, in the hills to the south of the city centre.-Landmarks:A number of historic buildings are situated there, including the house of the famous scientist Galileo Galilei ,...

, Bologna

Bologna

Bologna is the capital city of Emilia-Romagna, in the Po Valley of Northern Italy. The city lies between the Po River and the Apennine Mountains, more specifically, between the Reno River and the Savena River. Bologna is a lively and cosmopolitan Italian college city, with spectacular history,...

, Asiago

Asiago

Asiago is the name of both a minor township and the surrounding plateau region in the Province of Vicenza in the Veneto region of Northeastern Italy...

 and Hamburg

Hamburg

-History:The first historic name for the city was, according to Claudius Ptolemy's reports, Treva.But the city takes its modern name, Hamburg, from the first permanent building on the site, a castle whose construction was ordered by the Emperor Charlemagne in AD 808...

. He studied comet

Comet

A comet is an icy small Solar System body that, when close enough to the Sun, displays a visible coma and sometimes also a tail. These phenomena are both due to the effects of solar radiation and the solar wind upon the nucleus of the comet...

s, variable star

Star

A star is a massive, luminous sphere of plasma held together by gravity. At the end of its lifetime, a star can also contain a proportion of degenerate matter. The nearest star to Earth is the Sun, which is the source of most of the energy on Earth...

s, galaxies

Galaxy

A galaxy is a massive, gravitationally bound system that consists of stars and stellar remnants, an interstellar medium of gas and dust, and an important but poorly understood component tentatively dubbed dark matter. The word galaxy is derived from the Greek galaxias , literally "milky", a...

 and the evolution of the universe

Universe

The Universe is commonly defined as the totality of everything that exists, including all matter and energy, the planets, stars, galaxies, and the contents of intergalactic space. Definitions and usage vary and similar terms include the cosmos, the world and nature...

.

Maffei was well-known as a writer of history of astronomy and popularizer of astronomy through a series of books, including the Al di là della Luna (1973) and I mostri del cielo (1976).

Works

• Al di là della Luna (1973)
• I mostri del cielo (1976)
• L'universo nel tempo (1982)
• La cometa di Halley: dal passato al presente (1984)
• Giuseppe Settele, il suo diario e la questione galileiana (1987)

• Autobiographic paper:

P.Maffei, "My Researches at the Infrared Doors", Memorie della Società Astronomica Italiana, Vol. 74 n. 1, 2003, pag. 19-28 (PDF),
(from "IV National Conference on Infrared Astronomy, in honour of Paolo Maffei", Perugia, December 4–7, 2001).