Francesco Maurolico

Francesco Maurolico (

Francesco was born in Messina with the surname of Marulì, although the surname is sometimes reported as "Mauroli".^[4] He was one of seven sons of Antonio Marulì, a government official, and Penuccia. His father was a Greek physician who fled Constantinople when the Ottomans invaded the city.^[5][6] Antonio had studied with the Neoplatonic Hellenist Constantine Lascaris, so Francesco received a "Lascarian" education through his father^[7] and from Francesco Faraone and Giacomo Genovese, also disciples of Lascaris, whose influence is recognizable.^{[8] [9]}

In 1534 Francesco Marulì changed his surname to Mauro Lyco (from the meaning of "occult wolf"), after having adopted for eight years, uninterruptedly, the name of Mauro Lycio ("occult Apollo") as a member of a Messina academy.^[10]

Having already obtained priestly ordination since 1521 and, consequently, some ecclesiastical benefit, he was appointed abbot of the monastery of Santa Maria del Parto (in Castelbuono) in 1550 by Simone Ventimiglia marquis of Geraci, pupil and patron of Maurolico.^[11]

He died in 1575 of natural death, during a plague epidemic due to which the mathematician had retired to Contrada Annunziata: a hilly area north of Messina, where the Marulì family owned a villa that probably had hosted, sometimes, the academy of which the scientist-humanist had been part.^[12]

He is buried in the church of San Giovanni di Malta in Messina, where his nephews Francesco and Silvestro Maurolico erected an artistic marble sarcophagus, accompanied by the uncle's bust and Maurolico's coat of arms with the wolf and the star Sirius.

Accomplishments

In 1535 Maurolico collaborated with the painter

In 1569, he was appointed professor at the University of Messina.

Works

• Maurolico's Photismi de lumine et umbra and Diaphana concern the refraction of light and attempted to explain the natural phenomenon of the rainbow. He also studied the camera obscura. Photismi were completed in 1521, Diaphana first part 1523, the second and third ones in 1552, but all the material was published posthumously only in 1611.
• His unpublished manuscript Compaginationes solidorum regularium (1537) includes a statement of Euler's formula ${\displaystyle V-E+F=2}$ for the
  convex polyhedra in 1752.^[14]
• His Arithmeticorum libri duo (1575) includes the first known proof by mathematical induction.^[15]
• His De momentis aequalibus (completed in 1548, but first published only in 1685) attempted to calculate the
  barycenter of various bodies (pyramid, paraboloid
  , etc.).
• In his Sicanicarum rerum compendium, he presented the history of Sicily, and included some autobiographical details. He had been commissioned to write this work, and in 1553 the Senate of Messina granted him a salary of 100 gold pieces per year for two years so that he could finish this work and his works on mathematics.
• His De Sphaera Liber Unus (1575) contains a fierce attack against Copernicus' heliocentrism, in which Maurolico writes that Copernicus "deserved a whip or a scourge rather than a refutation".^[16]
• Maurolico published a Cosmographia in which he described a methodology for measuring the earth, which was later employed by Jean Picard in measuring length of meridian arc in 1670.
• Maurolico published an edition of Aristotle's Mechanics, and a work on music. He summarized Ortelius's Theatrum orbis terrarum and also wrote Grammatica rudimenta (1528) and De lineis horariis. He made a map of Sicily, which was published in 1575.
• Maurolico worked on ancient mathematical texts: Theodosius of Bithynia, Menelaus of Alexandria, Autolycus of Pitane, Euclid, Apollonius of Perga and Archimedes. He did not make new translations, but working on the existing ones, he provided new and sound interpretations of Greek mathematics.

Publications

• Cosmographia (in Latin). Venezia: eredi Lucantonio Giunta (1.). 1543.
• Cosmographia (in Latin). Paris: Guillaume Cavellat. 1558.
• Photismi de lumine et umbra ad perspectivam et radiorum incidentiam facientes (in Latin). Napolo: Tarquinio Longo. 1611.

Death and legacy

He died at Messina.

The lunar crater Maurolycus is named after him.

There is a school in Messina with his name.

In 2009 the Italian Ministry of Cultural Heritage has ordained the establishment of the Edizione nazionale dell'opera matematica di Francesco Maurolico (National Edition of Maurolico's mathematical oeuvre).

See also

• Camera obscura
• Center of mass
• Commandino's theorem
• Descartes on Polyhedra
• List of Roman Catholic scientist-clerics
• Greek scholars in the Renaissance
• Mathematical induction
• Octahedral number
• Timeline of calculus and mathematical analysis

References