DEL MUSCIO, GIAN GAETANO. – Piarist, mathematician, born in Foggia on 5 February 1746, died in Naples, as archbishop of Manfredonia, on 25 December 1808. Among the most distinguished Neapolitan mathematicians of the eighteenth century, he was the first to introduce lessons in infinitesimal calculus into public instruction.
He was a lecturer in mathematics at the newly founded University of Malta; upon returning to his homeland, he taught for many years at the military college of the Nunziatella in Naples, at the Ferdinandian College, and finally at the University of Naples itself, where he obtained the chair of physics through a competitive examination.
The pupils he trained in the three aforementioned chairs were innumerable; at the Nunziatella, moreover, he was the senior professor of the college and always enjoyed the esteem of the military cadets. Even seventy years later, the so-called little formulas of Fr. D. M. were still praised at that college; with them, there was no problem in ballistics that could not be solved quickly. In 1792 he was made bishop of Cerignola and S. Severo, and during the customary examination before Pope Pius VI he refuted Kraig’s work by means of mathematics. This astonished all those present, and the Pope most of all; rising, he said: « And who would have said that in this same hall, where once one who was believed to have offended the faith through mathematics was condemned, the stability of that faith would now be confirmed by the very same science? ».
From Cerignola he later moved to Manfredonia; the years of his episcopate, however, were troubled by the events of the times.
DE LOCIS SANCTORUM MARTYRUM:
V. ITINERARI.