Joseph Solomon Delmedigo

Joseph Solomon Delmedigo (or Del Medigo), also known as Yashar Mi-Qandia (Hebrew: יש"ר מקנדיא; 16 June 1591 – 16 October 1655), was a rabbi, author, physician, mathematician, and music theorist.

After graduating in 1613 he moved to Venice and spent a year in the company of Leon de Modena and Simone Luzzatto.

His only known works are Elim (Palms), dealing with mathematics, astronomy, the natural sciences, and metaphysics, as well as some letters and essays.

In the preface of the book the publisher writes that the author himself admitted once that when he was young (18 years old when he went to study in the university of Padua) he used to mock the Kabbalah and fiercely opposed those who studied it, but when he turned twenty seven he had a change of heart when he met two great philosophers, R' Yaakov ibn Nachmias and R' Shlomo Aravi, who were also firm adherents of the Kabbalah and they showed him how closely it resembles the philosophy of Plato, since then there was a renewed spirit within him.

A member of this family, Mordechai Gorodinsky (later hebraized to Nachmani) was one of the founders of the Israeli city of Rehovot reported by the Yad Vashem[6].