Evangelista Torricelli - Galileo Galilei's heir
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In 1644, the year his Opera Geometrica was published, he conceived the principle of the barometer, constructing what is now called the Torricelli tube and identifying the "Torricellian vacuum." Torricelli and Viviani demonstrated that vacuum can exist in nature and that air has weight, thus putting an end to the millennia-old philosophical debates on the horror vacui. A unit of pressure was named the Torr in his honor. The SI unit of pressure is the pascal, in honor of another illustrious physicist, Blaise Pascal, who inspired numerous experimental research from the extensive and definitive theory of atmospheric pressure described by Torricelli.
The word "barometer," coined by Robert Boyle in 1667, is today almost always associated with Torricelli, who is thus among the most celebrated Italian scientists in history.