Vincenzo Riccati

Vincenzo Riccati was a Venetian Catholic priest, mathematician and physicist, born in Castelfranco Veneto on 11 January 1707 and dead in Treviso on 17 January 1775, credited with introducing hyperbolic functions. He was the second son of Jacopo Riccati and brother of Giordano Riccati. He began his studies at the College of St. Francis Xavier in Bologna under Luigi Marchenti, a pupil of the French mathematician Pierre Varignon, and entered the Society of Jesus on 20 December 1726. He taught belles lettres in the Order colleges of Piacenza, Padua and Parma and then went to Rome to study theology. In 1739 he was assigned to the College of St. Francis Xavier in Bologna, where he taught mathematics for thirty years, succeeding his former teacher Marchenti. He was among the first members of the Italian National Academy of Sciences, and in 1760 he was elected an Honorary Fellow of the Russian Academy of Sciences.