Beschreibung
"ONE OF THE FOREMOST MATHEMATICIANS OF THE 16TH CENTURY". First and only edition, rare, and with a distinguished provenance, containing seven opuscula, and, with separate title and pagination, the Arithmeticorum libri duo; all of these works were published here for the first time. One of the opuscula contains the most important original work on conic sections published in the sixteenth century; the Arithmeticorum includes the first published use of mathematical induction. "Francesco Maurolico is generally recognized to have been one of the foremost mathematicians of the sixteenth century" (Rosen). Cajori has called him "the greatest geometer of the sixteenth century", although many of his works remain unpublished even today. "The greatest number of Maurolico s mathematical writings are gathered in the Opuscula mathematica; indeed, the second volume of that work, Arithmeticorum libri duo, is wholly devoted to that subject and contains, among other things, some notable research on the theory of numbers. This includes, in particular, a treatment of polygonal numbers that is more complete than that of Diophantus, to which Maurolico added a number of simple and ingenious proofs. L. E. Dickson has remarked upon Maurolico s argument that every perfect number in hexagonal, and therefore traingular, while Baldassarre Boncompagni noted his proof of a peculiarity of the succession of odd numbers … Among the topics related to mathematics in the Opuscula are chronology (the treatise Computus ecclesiasticus ) and gnomonics (in two treatises, both entitled De lineis horariis, one of which also discusses conics). The work also contains writing on Euclid s Elements … Of particular interest, too is a passage on a correlation between regular polyhedrons, which was commented upon by J.H.T. Müller, and later by Moritz Cantor" (DSB IX, 191). Referring to the second of the horological works, Rose (p. 176) remarks that "Apart from Werner s Libellus of 1522, the Libri tres is the first original European treatise on conic sections. It is of greater significance than Werner s book and had a wide influence in the sixteenth century" (Rose, p. 176). Several of the results on polygonal and square numbers in the Arithmeticorum are proved by making use of the principle of mathematical induction (e.g. Book I, Proposition 15), the first time this principle had been clearly stated in print. The manuscript of the book was sent to the bookseller Giovanni Comisino in Venice in 1569, but the book was not in press until November 1574. Even then there were further delays, and the book was not finally published until 26 July 1575, four days after Maurolico s death. Some bibliographies mention editions of 1574, 1580 and 1585, but in The Editions of Maurolico s mathematical works (Scripta Mathematica 24 (1959), pp. 59-76), Edward Rosen has shown that there was only one edition of the Opuscula and its companion piece the Arithmeticorum (though one or two of the works were reprinted separately later). Only two copies (one in a modern binding) have sold at auction since the Macclesfield copy in 2005. Provenance: Heinrich Christian Schumacher (1780-1850), German astronomer (name on title verso). Maurolico s family came from Greece, from which they had fled to Sicily to escape the Turks. Maurolico learned Greek, as well as astronomy, from his father. In 1521 he was ordained priest, and in 1550 the governor of Messina conferred upon Maurolico the abbey of Santa Maia del Parto. Maurolico also held a number of civil commissions in Messina, and like his father became master of the Messina mint. Most importantly, he gave public lectures on mathematics at the University of Messina, where he was appointed professor in 1569. "In 1569 the outlook for the publication of Maurolico s works improved with his appointment as lecturer in mathematics at the Jesuit University of Messina. This new educational affiliation inspired Maurolico to attempt again to publish new textbooks.
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