Vittorio Francesco Stancari

Vittorio Francesco Stancari was an Italian mathematician, born in Bologna on 29 July 1678 and dead there on 28 March 1709. He became professor of mathematics at the University of Bologna in 1698 and was awarded its chair of infinitesimal calculus in 1708. He belonged to a group of young men at the university, with Eustachio Manfredi, Gabriele Manfredi and Giuseppe Sentenziola Verzaglia, who took up Cartesian geometry and the differential calculus. His dissertations apply Leibnizian calculus to physics, hydrodynamics, meteorology and mechanics, and he lectured on Newton's Principia before the Accademia degli Inquieti. In 1706 he devised a way of measuring the pitch of sound with foil set vibrating by rotating toothed wheels, and with Manfredi he discovered the comet C/1707 W1 in November 1707.