Giambattista della Porta

Giambattista della Porta (1535–1615) was a Neapolitan nobleman and polymath whose Naples home drew scholars across Europe. In 1558 he published Magia Naturalis (Natural Magic), a popular survey of natural phenomena that he expanded to twenty books in 1589 and which spread knowledge of the lens-equipped camera obscura. His 1563 treatise De Furtivis Literarum Notis described a digraphic substitution cipher, earning him regard as the foremost cryptographer of the Renaissance.

He founded the Academia Secretorum Naturae, but was examined by the Inquisition and forced to disband it. He also wrote some twenty comedies in the commedia erudita tradition.