Luca Pacioli

Franciscan friar, Fra Luca Bartolomeo de Pacioli, (1446/7 – 1517) was an Italian mathematician and contributor to the field now known as accounting. He was also called    "Luca di Borgo" after his birthplace, Borgo Sansepolcro, Tuscany.

In 1475, he started teaching in Perugia, first as a private teacher and from 1477 holding the first chair in mathematics. He wrote a comprehensive textbook in the vernacular for his students. He continued to work as a private tutor of mathematics and was, in fact, instructed to stop teaching at this level in Sansepolcro in 1491. In 1494 his first printed book Summa de arithmetica, geometria, proportioni et proportionalità, was published in Venice. In 1497 he accepted an invitation from duke Ludovico Sforza to work in Milan, where he met Leonardo da Vinci (their paths appear to have finally separated around 1506).

In 1510 Pacioli returned to Perugia to lecture there again. He also lectured again in Rome in 1514 but by this time he was 70 years of age and nearing the end of his active life of scholarship and teaching. He returned to Sansepolcro where he died in 1517.

Some of his works:

• Tractatus mathematicus ad discipulos perusinos
• Summa de arithmetica, geometria, proportioni et proportionalità
• De viribus quantitatis
• De ludo scachorum
• De divina proportione (a famous book on mathematical and artistic proportions and illustrated by Leonardo da Vinci).