René-François de Sluse

René François Walther de Sluze (* July 7, 1622 in Visé, Liège Province, † March 19, 1685 in Liege, Wallonia, also Renatus Franciscus Slusius ) was a Walloon mathematician, canon of Liège, and abbot of Amay.

Sluze studied from 1638 to 1642 at the University of Leiden and became a Master of Law at the University La Sapienza in Rome. There he studied several languages, mathematics and astronomy. Slusius hit the ecclesiastical career a: 1650 he was a canon of Liege, in 1659 he was in the Council of the Bishop of Liège, and in 1666 he became abbot of Amay.

Sluze corresponded with Blaise Pascal, Christiaan Huygens, John Wallis and Michelangelo Ricci ( 1619-1682 ). In 1674 he was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society. In addition to his work on mathematics, in which he dealt among other things with the finding tangents to curves, the cycloid and spirals and have been praised by Wallis, he also wrote for example about astronomy and other natural sciences, history and theology.

After Slusius various algebraic curves are named, among other things, by Blaise Pascal so-called Pearl of the Sluzius (1657 /58).

See also: conchoid of de Sluze