Caltech is filled with inventors, people who create everything from scientific instruments to medical devices, from powerful new algorithms to heretofore unknown materials at the quantum scale. But nearly every advancement that is made today has a scientific lineage that dates back decades or even centuries.
Cristiano Zanetti, who was named the inaugural Eleanor Searle Postdoctoral Scholar Teaching Fellow in the History of Science and Technology in 2025, is teaching the history of inventions to a new generation of scholars through courses that explore technological innovation during the Renaissance and the development of scientific instruments from antiquity to the early modern period.
The Searle Postdoctoral Fellowship offers a two-year appointment during which the fellow divides their time between teaching at Caltech and research at The Huntington. The program aims to enhance Caltech's mission to teach scientists about the social context of discovery and innovation, and to better equip them to engage the social world, as well as the physical, in their research.
"I am thrilled and honored by the chance to engage with future technological innovators, some of whom may go on to change the world, in conversations about the history of inventions," says Zanetti, who is teaching Instruments of Knowledge from Antiquity to the Early Modern World and Leonardo da Vinci & Co.: How to Understand Technological Invention in the Long Renaissance this academic year. "My hope is that these courses will empower students to contextualize phenomena, draw inspiration from their predecessors, and critically challenge established narratives."
Zanetti's work roots Caltech's recent history of inventions in the deeper history of inventions from antiquity through early modern Europe, with special attention to the European Renaissance. Humanism and Renaissance Europe, he says, offer a unique lens to see how inventors emerged from anonymity as humanist leaders, drawing on ancient models to create a space for technological innovators recognized for their ingenuity and rewarded with greater economic resources.
"The Huntington's unparalleled collections provide essential resources for my research, offering access to unique works not readily available elsewhere, including rare books and manuscripts on early modern technology and the history of technology materials," says Zanetti, who first came to Caltech in 2022 as a Marie Skłodowska-Curie Global Fellow in collaboration with the Università Ca' Foscari Venezia in Italy. "Given my interest in Renaissance architect-engineers, practical mathematics, and mechanical inventions, I am drawing on the Huntington's historical architectural books to explore diverse traditions of construction and machinery used by the Florentine academies."
Zanetti began his professional career as an archaeologist after graduating with an MA in medieval history from the University of Bologna. During his time in the field, Zanetti undertook a historical and archaeological analysis of the cathedral in his hometown of Cremona, Italy, for its 900th anniversary. "The cathedral was built in 1107, but in 1117 there was a terrible earthquake. Sources from the period say the cathedral was destroyed and then rebuilt, but art historians disagree whether the edifice was just restored or entirely rebuilt," Zanetti explains. "So, one of my tasks was to examine the walls to tell which parts dated from before or after the earthquake. There was also a lot of history to be investigated and narrated behind the decision to erect this majestic building."
This two-year project inspired Zanetti to return to graduate school, where he earned a PhD from the European University Institute in the history of science and technology. There he became acquainted with a 16th-century engineer, Janello Torriani. "Torriani built some of the most astonishing machines of the Renaissance and was, to the best of my knowledge, the first engineer to be celebrated with the full panoply of courtly rhetoric, from medals to paintings, poetry, and sculpture. He worked for the most powerful European rulers of his time, the kings of Spain," Zanetti says. "Because of the flourishing of the Black Legend in the following centuries—an anti-Spanish and anti-Catholic propaganda narrative depicting the Spanish Empire as religiously fanatical and anti-scientific—the astonishing technological achievements of Janello were erased from the collective memory."
Examining Torriani's career yielded a fresh perspective on the world of the European Renaissance for Zanetti. Though there were many successful engineers in the sense we use the word today, the profession was not the same at the time. "There was no school to become an engineer or guild to be trained as an engineer. The people we now think of as engineers came instead from guilds for construction or painting or metalworking or carpentry," he explains. "The term engineer was perfectly interchangeable with the term architect, or even clockmaker or surveyor, and it was used by state authorities to create offices for problem-solving in fortification, water management, construction, and more."
Renaissance Florence (circa 1400–1600) represents a seminal case study: This city was a vibrant training ground for engineers who spread from Italy into all of Europe. Inspired by classical models, and especially by Vitruvius—Julius Caesar's artillery engineer and author of the only whole surviving Latin technical work on construction called De architectura—these architect-engineers revolutionized the concept and practice of what we would now call engineering. Vitruvius, says Zanetti, "envisioned a special position for the architect-engineer's knowledge, between theory and practice. If you are just educated as a craftsperson, you will be a mere executor of somebody else's designs. If you are an intellectual, you may be able to envision some new contribution to a particular field, but you will not be able to turn your ideas into something practical. Only a person trained in both theory and practice can be an inventor."
These architect-engineers, of whom Leonardo da Vinci is perhaps the most iconic representative, applied geometry to the study of natural problems and envisioned bodies and phenomena as assemblages of mechanical elements.
"At the end of the 16th century and the beginning of the 17th, every major court in Europe had an architect-engineer that was either coming from Florence or who had been sent to Florence to learn about engineering," Zanetti has learned. As a result, Zanetti is now researching manuscripts from the period to gain insight into how this nascent idea of engineering developed during the time of Galileo, one of the celebrated founders of the "new science," who was exposed to the teachings of these architect-engineers.
"The research I'm doing through the Searle Postoctoral Fellowship will provide an in-depth analysis of the Florentine academies' role in shaping early modern Europe's architect-engineer profession, particularly in practical mathematics and technological innovation," Zanetti says. "My hope is that the findings will deepen our understanding of Renaissance engineers' roles and contribute to broader discussions about the origins of modern science and technology during this era."
Cristiano Zanetti, the Eleanor Searle Postdoctoral Scholar Teaching Fellow in the History of Science and Technology
Credit: Daria Bottini
