Unwilling to be a mere parchment engineer, Bernoulli made his name by mapping the so-called hydra, Etruria’s river system. Because of his youth, his first building project was a renovation. The Etruscan bridge connecting the old city walls to the mainland was straining under the rising population. Unimpressed by its antiquity, Bernoulli considered bolstering inadequate structures not only folly but immoral.

His alternative proposal, an audacious one-span bridge, was controversial. Surveyors, masons, and engineers of the day insisted that such a structure would not support its own weight, let alone the city’s traffic. Bernoulli found an influential advocate in the Patrician Senator Postumus Tremellius Felix,5 whose forceful arguments convinced the Curia. The old bridge was demolished and speedily replaced with a bridge immediately recognized as an architectural marvel. Bernoulli was never questioned again, at least in matters of technique.