Roger Joseph Boscovich

Roger Joseph Boscovich was a physicist, astronomer, mathematician, philosopher, diplomat, poet, theologian, Jesuit priest and polymath from the Republic of Ragusa, born on 18 May 1711 in Dubrovnik and dead on 13 February 1787. He studied and lived in Italy and France, where he also published many of his works. His father, Nikola Bošković, was a Ragusan merchant, and his mother, Paola Bettera, was the daughter of a local nobleman of Italian origin. Boscovich produced a precursor of atomic theory and made many contributions to astronomy, including the first geometric procedure for determining the equator of a rotating planet from three observations of a surface feature, and a method of computing the orbit of a planet from three observations of its position. In 1753 he also discovered the absence of an atmosphere on the Moon. He is recorded in this atlas for his work as a mathematician.