DEL MUSCIO, GIAN GAETANO. - Piarist, mathematician, b. at Foggia on 5 February 1746, d. at Naples, archbishop of Manfredonia, on 25 December 1808. Among the most distinguished Neapolitan mathematicians of the 18th century, he was the first to introduce lectures on infinitesimal calculus into public teaching.
He was a lecturer in mathematics at the newly founded University of Malta, whence, having returned to his homeland, he taught for many years at the military college of the Nunziatella in Naples, at the Ferdinandiano college, and finally at the University of Naples itself, where he obtained the chair of physics by competition.
Countless were the pupils he trained in the three chairs mentioned above; at the Nunziatella, moreover, he was the first among the professors of the college, and he always enjoyed the esteem of the military cadets. Even after 70 years, the so-called little formulas of Fr. D. M. were praised in that college, with which there was no problem of ballistics that was not quickly solved. In 1792 he was made bishop of Cerignola and S. Severo, and in the customary examination before Pope Pius VI he refuted with mathematics the work of Kraig, which aroused the wonder of all those present, and more than all of the Pope, who, having risen, spoke thus: "And who would have said that in the very hall in which one who was believed to have offended the faith with mathematics was once condemned, now by that same science its stability should be confirmed?"
From Cerignola he later passed to Manfredonia; the years of his episcopate, however, were troubled by the vicissitudes of the times.
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Leodegario Picanyol
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