PACIOLI, LUCA. — Franciscan, mathematician, born at Borgo S. Sepolcro between 1445 and 1450, died in Rome
after 1514. He led a very eventful life: while still very young he was in Venice, tutor to the sons of a wealthy merchant, for whom he wrote his first short treatise on algebra, ca. 1470. In the same year he was in Rome beside Leon Battista Alberti; shortly afterward, 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 may be the one contained in cod. Vat. 3129. In 1481 he was in Zara, then once again in Perugia, Naples, and Rome. In 1494 he published in Venice his major work: Summa de arithmetica, geometria, proportioni et proportionalità, perhaps of little originality, but of great importance in the history of mathematics, because it was the first treatise of its kind to be printed, and greatly contributed to the dissemination of the science.
A very interesting work was the Divina proportione, composed in 1496 and illustrated by Leonardo da Vinci, his friend, with whom he was particularly associated from that year onward—that is, from the time when Ludovico il Moro had summoned him to Milan to teach, establishing a chair of mathematics for him. At the fall of Moro, he wandered for some time with Leonardo: he was in Florence, then taught at Pisa (1500), Bologna (1501-1502), and once again Florence (1502-1505), and in 1508 lectured on Euclid in Venice. For a Libellus corporum regularium he was accused of plagiarism, as having appropriated it from his friend Piero della Francesca, who painted a magnificent portrait of P., which disappeared after serving as the model for the other portrait that survives, attributed to Jacopo de' Barbari (Pinacoteca of Naples: V. MATEMATICA, vol. VIII, cols. 341-42).
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. Alberto Ghinato