Mario Bettinus

Mario Bettinus, in Italian Mario Bettini, was an Italian Jesuit philosopher, mathematician and astronomer who died on 7 November 1657. He studied mathematics at the Jesuit College of San Rocco in Parma under Jean Verviers and Giuseppe Biancani and took over the mathematics chair when Biancani died in 1624, teaching military art, stereometry, conics and military architecture. He also served as a military consultant to the courts of Parma and Modena. He called himself a philosophus mathematicus, a scholar who uses mathematics to study natural philosophy, and he doubted some of Galileo conclusions, notably about the height of lunar mountains. He taught Guarino Guarini and opposed Cavalieri method of indivisibles. His best-known work is the Apiaria Universae Philosophiae Mathematicae of 1645, an encyclopedic collection of mathematical curiosities. A lunar crater is named after him.