Francisco Ruiz Lozano

Francisco Ruiz Lozano was a Peruvian soldier, astronomer, mathematician and educator, born in Oruro in Upper Peru, now Bolivia, in 1607 and dead in Mexico City in 1677. He studied with the Jesuits at the College of San Martín in Lima, where he acquired his love of mathematics and studied hydrography as a mathematical science, and in 1651 he moved to Mexico City to continue at the University of Mexico and to learn navigation in practice. With his teacher Fray Diego Rodríguez he observed the comet of 1652. Back in Lima from 1655 he became captain of Spanish infantry, first director of the nautical school founded in 1657, cosmógrafo mayor of Peru and a tutor to the sons of two viceroys, and he held the first university chair of mathematics in Peru. His Tratado de Cometas of 1665 was the first publication of European astronomical observations in South America.