Michelangelo Ricci

Michelangelo Ricci was an Italian mathematician and a Cardinal of the Roman Catholic Church, born in Rome on 30 January 1619 and dead on 12 May 1682. Born to a family of low social standing from Bergamo, he studied theology and law in Rome and mathematics under Benedetto Castelli, a student of Galileo, and was a friend of Torricelli and an important figure of the Galilean school. Although disqualified from ordination by epilepsy, he was created Cardinal-Deacon in 1681. His published mathematics is a nineteen page treatise of 1666, Exercitatio geometrica, de maximis et minimis, which studies the maxima of functions of the form x to the m times a minus x to the n and the tangents to curves y to the m equals k times x to the n, and was republished with Mercator's Logarithmo-Technia in 1688. He also studied spirals and cycloids and saw that finding tangents and calculating areas are reciprocal operations. His letters to Torricelli, Viviani and Sluse show his thoughts on paraboloids, hyperboloids and the vacuum.