Ostilio Ricci da Fermo (1540–1603) was an

Italian Italian(s) may refer to: * Anything of, from, or related to the people of Italy over the centuries ** Italians, a Romance ethnic group related to or simply a citizen of the Italian Republic or Italian Kingdom ** Italian language, a Romance languag ...

mathematician A mathematician is someone who uses an extensive knowledge of mathematics in their work, typically to solve mathematical problems. Mathematicians are concerned with numbers, data, quantity, mathematical structure, structure, space, Mathematica ...

Biography

He was a university professor in

Florence Florence ( ; ) is the capital city of the Italy, Italian region of Tuscany. It is also the most populated city in Tuscany, with 362,353 inhabitants, and 989,460 in Metropolitan City of Florence, its metropolitan province as of 2025. Florence ...

at the

Accademia delle Arti del Disegno The Accademia delle Arti del Disegno ("Academy of the Arts of Drawing") is an academy of artists in Florence, in Italy. It was founded on 13 January 1563 by Cosimo I de' Medici, under the influence of Giorgio Vasari. It was initially known as ...

, founded in 1560 by

Giorgio Vasari Giorgio Vasari (30 July 1511 – 27 June 1574) was an Italian Renaissance painter, architect, art historian, and biographer who is best known for his work ''Lives of the Most Excellent Painters, Sculptors, and Architects'', considered the ideol ...

. Ricci is also known for being

Galileo Galilei Galileo di Vincenzo Bonaiuti de' Galilei (15 February 1564 – 8 January 1642), commonly referred to as Galileo Galilei ( , , ) or mononymously as Galileo, was an Italian astronomer, physicist and engineer, sometimes described as a poly ...

's teacher. Ricci was the Court Mathematician to the Grand Duke Francesco de' Medici in Florence, in 1580, when Galileo attended his lectures in

Pisa Pisa ( ; ) is a city and ''comune'' (municipality) in Tuscany, Central Italy, straddling the Arno just before it empties into the Ligurian Sea. It is the capital city of the Province of Pisa. Although Pisa is known worldwide for the Leaning Tow ...

. Galileo was enrolled at the

University of Pisa The University of Pisa (, UniPi) is a public university, public research university in Pisa, Italy. Founded in 1343, it is one of the oldest universities in Europe. Together with Scuola Normale Superiore di Pisa and Sant'Anna School of Advanced S ...

, by his father Vincenzo, in order to study medicine. Instead, Galilei became more interested in mathematics, after meeting Ostilio Ricci, a former student of

Niccolò Tartaglia Nicolo, known as Tartaglia (; 1499/1500 – 13 December 1557), was an Italian mathematician, engineer (designing fortifications), a surveyor (of topography, seeking the best means of defense or offense) and a bookkeeper from the then Republi ...

. Ricci taught Galileo the mathematics of

Euclid Euclid (; ; BC) was an ancient Greek mathematician active as a geometer and logician. Considered the "father of geometry", he is chiefly known for the '' Elements'' treatise, which established the foundations of geometry that largely domina ...

and

Archimedes Archimedes of Syracuse ( ; ) was an Ancient Greece, Ancient Greek Greek mathematics, mathematician, physicist, engineer, astronomer, and Invention, inventor from the ancient city of Syracuse, Sicily, Syracuse in History of Greek and Hellenis ...

, who both deeply influenced Galileo's later work. Ricci considered mathematics not to be a distinct science, but a practical tool for problems in mechanics and engineering. Ostilio Ricci is systematically cited in the various biographies of Galileo Galilei. He died at age 62, in Florence. Italy. His cause of death remains unknown.

Works

* Ostilio Ricci (c. 1590),
Problemi di Geometria Pratica: L'uso dell'Archimetro
', Manuscript, Florence, Biblioteca Nazionale Centrale, II._.57, c. 37r.

Notes

References

* T. B. Settle, "Ostilio Ricci, a bridge between Alberti and Galileo", in ''XIIe Congrès International d'Histoire des Science'', Actes, Paris, 1971, III B, pp. 121–126. * F. Vinci, ''Ostilio Ricci da Fermo, Maestro di Galileo Galilei'', Fermo, 1929. * James Reston, Jr., ''Galileo: A Life,'' Harper Collins, 1994. * Albert Presas i Puig, ''Ostilio Ricci, the Practical Education and the Canon of Technical Knowledge at the Beginning of the Italian Renaissance,'' Max-Planck-Institut für Wissenschaftsgeschichte, Berlin, 2002. * Osler, Margaret J. Reconfiguring the World: Nature, God, and Human Understanding from the Middle Ages to Early Modern Europe. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins UP, 2010.

External links

*

Ricci's AI genealogy

Ricci's neurotree genealogy

Galileo & Ricci

{{DEFAULTSORT:Ricci, Ostilio 1540 births 1603 deaths Scholars from the Papal States 16th-century Italian mathematicians People from Fermo