Relevant Mathematicians

Ludwig Schlafti

    19th century swiss mathematician who proved that "there can be at most 6 regular polytopes in four-space" (B3D, 101)  in "a long work on higher-dimensional geometry which contained not one picture." (B3D, 102).

Edwin Abbott Abbott

    19th century English clergyman and mathematician who wrote Flatland, "a social satire and an introduction to the idea of higher dimensions" (B3D, 2).

Blaise Pascal

    17th century French mathematician and physicist who joined the
Jansenist monastery at Port-Royalmonestary late in his life.

Bernhard Placidus Johann Nepomuk Bolzano

    Late 18th and early 19th century Czech mathematician/Roman Catholic priest who "freed
calculus from the concept of the infinitesimal."

Juan Caramuel y Lobkowitz 

    A 17th century mathematician and a member of the Cistercian Order,
Lobkowitz worked with numbers to base n and logarithms.

Philip van Lansberge

    A Protestant minister born in the middle of the 16th century who
calculated pi to 28 places using "a new method."

Stefano degli Angeli

    17th century Rector of a religious establishment in Rome and
mathematician who used infinitesimals to study spirals, parabolas and
hyperbolas.

Nicole d' Oresme

    14th century French mathematician who invented coordinate geometry
and served as a chaplain to King Charles V.