Also known as:
Italian: Fra Luca Pacioli, Luca Paciolo
PACIOLI, LUCA. - Franciscan, mathematician, b. at Borgo S. Sepolcro between 1445 and 1450, d. at Rome after 1514. He had a very eventful life: as a very young man he was in Venice, as tutor to the sons of a rich merchant, for whom he wrote his first short treatise on algebra, ca. 1470. In the same year he was in Rome at the side of Leon Battista Alberti; shortly afterwards, perhaps in his native town, he took the Franciscan habit. From 1475 he was professor of mathematics at Perugia, where he composed a treatise that is perhaps the one contained in cod. Vat. 3129. In 1481 he was at Zara, then again at Perugia, at Naples, at Rome. In 1494 at Venice he published his capital work: Summa de arithmetica, geometria, proportioni et proportionalità, perhaps of little originality, but of great importance in the history of mathematics, because it is the first treatise of its kind to be put into print, greatly serving the dissemination of science.
A very interesting work was the Divina proportione, composed in 1496, illustrated by Leonardo da Vinci, his friend, with whom he was in contact particularly from that year, that is, from when Ludovico il Moro had called him to Milan for teaching, establishing for him the chair of mathematics. After the fall of the Moro, he wandered for some time with Leonardo: he was at Florence, then taught at Pisa (1500), at Bologna (1501-1502), again at Florence (1502-1505), and in 1508 he was lecturing on Euclid at Venice. For a Libellus corporum regularium he was accused of plagiarism, as having usurped it from his friend Piero della Francesca, who painted a magnificent portrait of P., which disappeared after having served as the model for the other one that survives, attributed to Jacopo de' Barbari (Pinacoteca of Naples: see reproduction under the entry MATEMATICA, vol. VIII, coll. 341-42).
Bibliography8 worksP. Cassoli, Scritti inediti, edited by B. Boncompagni, Rome 1857 (eulogy of fra L. P.; extract of the Summa of fra L. P.); E. Narducci, Inte
BIBL.: P. Cassoli, Scritti inediti, edited by B. Boncompagni, Rome 1857 (eulogy of fra L. P.; extract of the Summa of fra L. P.); E. Narducci, Interno a due edizioni della Summa de arithmetica di fra L. P., Rome 1863; V. Vianello, L. P. nella storia della razioneria, Messina 1896; G. Mancini, L'opera De corporibus regularibus di Pietro Franceschi, detto Della Francesca, usurpata da fra L. P., in Memorie della classe di sc. mor. e fil. della R. Accad. dei Lincei, 5th series, 14 (1915), pp. 446-77; A. Agostini, Il De viribus quantitatis di L. P., in Period. di matematica, 4 (1924). pp. 165-92; I. Ricci, Fra L. P. L'uomo e lo scienziato. Sansepolcro 1940; R. E. Taylor, No royal road L. P. and his times. Chapel Hill 1942.
Ghinato, Alberto. “Pacioli, luca.” In Enciclopedia Cattolica, vol. IX, coll. 510–511. Città del Vaticano: Ente per l’Enciclopedia Cattolica e per il Libro Cattolico, 1952. https://azioneromana.com/article/pacioli-luca.
MLA
Ghinato, Alberto. “Pacioli, luca.” Enciclopedia Cattolica, vol. IX, Ente per l’Enciclopedia Cattolica e per il Libro Cattolico, 1952, coll. 510–511. Azione Romana, https://azioneromana.com/article/pacioli-luca.
BibTeX
@incollection{ec9_pacioli_luca,
author = {Ghinato, Alberto},
title = {Pacioli, luca},
booktitle = {Enciclopedia Cattolica},
volume = {IX},
pages = {510--511},
note = {Cited by column},
publisher = {Ente per l’Enciclopedia Cattolica e per il Libro Cattolico},
address = {Città del Vaticano},
year = {1952},
url = {https://azioneromana.com/article/pacioli-luca}
}
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