Fabrizio Mordente

Fabrizio Mordente (1532 to about 1608) was an Italian mathematician from Salerno, best known for inventing the proportional eight-pointed compass, an instrument with two arms and sliding cursors for solving problems on the circumference, area and angles of a circle. He studied at Naples, then travelled through Crete, Cyprus, Egypt, Palestine and Mesopotamia, took a Portuguese ship to India, spent three years in Goa and returned by way of Lisbon and Paris, sketching the first design on the way. He served at the courts of Maximilian II in Vienna and Rudolf II in Prague, where he met Giordano Bruno, whose dialogues praised and criticised the compass and provoked a public quarrel. Later he worked for the Duke of Guise and then for Alexander Farnese, Duke of Parma, and published several treatises between 1567 and 1598.