Michelangelo Ricci
Michelangelo Ricci ( born January 30, 1619 Rome, † May 12, 1682 ) was an Italian cardinal and mathematicians.
Ricci was like his friend Evangelista Torricelli student of Benedetto Castelli, professor of mathematics at the University of Rome and friend of Galileo Galilei. Torricelli taught Ricci and other students when Castelli was absent from Rome in representation. Mainly studied Ricci but law and theology, where he became friends with the mathematician René de Sluze, who also studied law there. After Ricci worked for the Catholic Church ( without ever ordained a priest ), was secretary of the Congregation for Indulgences and Relics, was advisor to the CDF ( Inquisition), and was even in 1681 by Pope Innocent XI. appointed Cardinal ( while he was reluctant initially ).
In these roles, he tried to dampen confrontation of the church with the evolving modern science (as in the case of Galileo escalated ). For example, he corresponded to the Church officially acceptable formulations with the Galileo students and physicists Vincenzo Viviani, when he wrote to a biography of Galileo.
He is now ( also reprinted as an appendix to Logarithmo - technica by Nicolaus Mercator 1668) mainly because of its mathematical publication Exercitatio geometrica, De minimis et maxima of 1666 known. It is the scholar Stefano Gradi ( Stjepan Gradić; 1613-1683 ), curator of the Vatican Library, dedicated. In it, he determined the maximum of and the tangent of. In it there is also an early example of Mathematical Induction. His reputation as a mathematician by his contemporaries but was based mainly on his correspondence with, among others, Torricelli, Christopher Clavius , Viviani and De Sluze, where you will find results of Ricci, for example, via generalizations of cycloid and spirals. In a letter from 1668 there is an explicit formulation of the Fundamental Theorem of Calculus ( tangent and surface determination as mutually inverse operations). Torricelli letter told him his barometer experiments and Ricci discussed it with Marin Mersenne, when he visited Rome in 1644.
A manuscript on algebra in Genoa shows his familiarity with the algebraic research in the series of François Viète.
Bonaventura Cavalieri originally wished that Torricelli (who also died soon afterwards ) and Ricci publish his posthumous works, including Ricci but did not have time.
He was a corresponding member of the Accademia del Cimento in Florence Medici ( Viviani and the other belonged to ) and also stood with Leopoldo de 'Medici in correspondence. He founded in 1668 by Giovanni Giusto Ciampini ( 1633-1698 ) and Francesco Nazari ( 1634-1714 ), the magazine Giornale, whose publication he made in 1675. He belonged to the radius of the former abdicated Queen Christina of Sweden in Rome.
Ricci suffered all his life from epileptic seizures.
He is buried in Rome in the church of San Francesco a Ripa.