Juan Caramuel y Lobkowitz
Juan Caramuel y Lobkowitz (* May 23, 1606 in Madrid, † September 8, 1682 in Vigevano ) was a Spanish Catholic priest, philosopher, theologian, astronomer and mathematician with Bohemian ancestors.
He was a gifted child, and dealt early with difficult math problems and already published ten years old astronomical tables.
After a superficial college education, which he completed quickly thanks to his skills, he turned to the study of Asian languages, especially the Chinese. He was inducted into the Cistercian Order at the Monastery of La Espina ( Diocese of Palencia ) and began after his ordination an extraordinary versatile and brilliant career. During his affiliation to the Monastery of Dunes in Flanders he gained the favor of the Cardinal-Infante Ferdinand, Governor of the Netherlands through his sermons. 1638 awarded him the University of Louvain, the doctor of theology. 1644 appointed him to the Spanish King Philip IV abbot of the monastery Disibodenberg ( Archdiocese of Mainz) and later ( after Caramuel had to leave the Palatinate ) to his ambassador at the court of the German Emperor Ferdinand III .. Caramuel successively abbot was of Melrose (Scotland ), Superior of the Black Spaniard - Benedictines of Montserrat in Vienna and Vicar of the Archbishop of Prague. When the Swedes in 1648 Prague attacked, armed and he led a militia of cleric who put themselves in the service of the defense of the city. For his bravery on this occasion the emperor gave him a golden collar. Later he became Archbishop of Otranto, and at his death he was Bishop of Vigevano.
Caramuel published (according to the census of Jean -Noël Paquot ) not less than 262 books on grammar, poetry, rhetoric, mathematics, astronomy, physics, politics, church law, logic, metaphysics, and theology. However, retained very little of it lasting importance. He loved to defend novel theories. In his Theologia moralis ad prima atque clarissima principia reducta ( " The theology of morality attributed to the first and clearest Basics", lion in 1643 ), he tried to solve theological problems using mathematical methods. Due to some of his moral views Alfonso Maria de Liguori referred to him as " Prince of Laxisten ".
In his book Mathesis biceps vetus et nova ( Two Headed Mathematics - old and new) of 1670 is the first release is to find (even before Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz 1705) of the dual system (and systems of bodies to other bases) in Europe. He treats it also tasks of probability theory with applications to dice games and the lottery ..