Marino Ghetaldi

Marino Ghetaldi, in Latin Marinus Ghetaldus and in Croatian Marin Getaldić, born on 2 October 1568 and dead on 11 April 1626, was a Ragusan and Croatian scientist, a mathematician and physicist who studied in Italy, England and Belgium and whose best results lie in optics and mathematics. One of the few students of François Viète and a friend of Giovanni Camillo Glorioso, he was known for applying algebra to geometry and for research in geometrical optics, on which he wrote seven works including the Promotus Archimedus of 1603 and the De resolutione et compositione mathematica of 1630. In 1607 he issued a leaflet with the solutions of forty-two geometrical problems, the Variorum problematum collectio, which laid ground for the algebraisation of geometry. He built a parabolic mirror 66 centimetres across, kept at the National Maritime Museum in London, and corresponded regularly with Galileo, whom he met in Padua.