Baldassarre Boncompagni

Baldassarre Boncompagni

Prince Baldassarre Boncompagni-Ludovisi (10 May 1821 13 April 1894), was an Italian historian of mathematics and aristocrat.

Biography

Boncompagni was born in Rome, into an ancient noble and wealthy Roman family, the Ludovisi-Boncompagni, as the third son of Prince Luigi Boncompagni Ludovisi and Princess Maria Maddalena Odescalchi.[1] He studied under the mathematician Barnabas Dotterel and astronomer Ignazio Calandrelli, developing an interest in the history of science. In 1847 Pope Pius IX appointed him a member of the Accademia dei Lincei. Between 1850-1862 he produced studies on mathematicians of the Middle Ages and in 1868 founded the Bullettino di bibliografia e di storia delle scienze matematiche e fisiche. After the annexation of the Papal States into the Kingdom of Italy (1870), he refused further participation in the new Academy of the Lincei, and did not accept the appointment as Senator of the Kingdom offered by Quintino Sella. He did, however, serve as a member of several other Italian and foreign academies.

Boncompagni edited Bullettino di bibliografia e di storia delle scienze matematiche e fisiche ("The bulletin of bibliography and history of mathematical and physical sciences") (1868–1887), the first Italian periodical entirely dedicated to the history of mathematics.[2] He edited every article that appeared in the journal.[3] He also prepared and published the first modern edition of Fibonacci's Liber Abaci.

Selected works

References

  1.  Herbermann, Charles, ed. (1913). "Balthasar Boncompagni". Catholic Encyclopedia. New York: Robert Appleton Company.
  2. Massimo Mazzotti (2000): For science and for the Pope-king: writing the history of the exact sciences in nineteenth-century Rome, BJHS, 33, pp. 257–282
  3. A. Favaro, `Don Baldassarre Boncompagni e la storia delle scienze matematiche e fisiche ', Atti del Regio Istituto Veneto di Scienze, Lettere ed Arti (1894–5), 6, pp. 509–21, 514, cited in Massimo Mazzotti (2000): For science and for the Pope-king: writing the history of the exact sciences in nineteenth-century Rome, BJHS, 33, pp. 257–282

External links

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