Albert of Saxony (philosopher)

Albert of Saxony, also called Albertus de Saxonia, was a fourteenth century German logician, natural philosopher and mathematician, born around 1320 at Rickensdorf near Helmstedt and dead in 1390. He studied at Prague and Paris, became a master of arts at Paris in 1351 and served as its rector in 1353. After diplomatic work between the pope and the Duke of Austria he became the first rector of the University of Vienna in 1365, and in 1366 he was made bishop of Halberstadt, a post he held until his death. His best known work is the Perutilis logica, a systematic handbook that develops Ockhamist positions on signs and supposition and gives an influential account of logical consequences, alongside a large collection of Sophismata on paradoxes of self-reference. In natural philosophy he carried the Parisian physics of impetus to Italy and central Europe, and his commentaries on Aristotle's Physics and De caelo were widely read. His mathematical writings include the Tractatus proportionum on ratios applied to motion, a question on the squaring of the circle and a treatise on maxima and minima. Scholars once thought him a pupil of Jean Buridan, but the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy notes that this idea is now widely questioned.