Aguilon, François d'

AGUILON, FRANÇOIS d'. - Belgian Jesuit, b. in Brussels on 4 Jan. 1567, entered the novitiate of Tournai in 1586. Ordained priest in 1596, he spent the rest of his life in the college of Antwerp, as professor of theology, vice-rector and then rector; he died there on 20 May 1617.

He enjoyed a reputation as a skilled mathematician, chiefly for his great treatise Opticorum Libri VI (Antwerp 1613, in-folio, with fine engravings from drawings by Rubens; reprinted at Würzburg in 1685 and at Nuremberg in 1702); the work was to have comprised three volumes, but remained incomplete. Particularly noteworthy in it is the study of projections, in whose terminology he introduced the name stereographic projection. To his efforts is largely due the creation, in the college of the Society at Antwerp, of a special school of mathematics, inaugurated in 1617 by the distinguished geometer Fr. Gregory of Saint-Vincent and which had a fair output. D'A. also has his place in the history of art: he designed the plans for the church of the professed house of the Jesuits of Antwerp (today St. Charles Borromeo), one of the most important monuments of the Baroque in Belgium, but it is difficult to distinguish his part from that of the great artist Fr. Peter Huyssens, who assisted and continued the construction after the death of its rector.

Edmondo Lamalle