Juan caramuel y lobkowitz biography

(b. Madrid, Spain, 23 May 1606; d. Milan, Italy, 7 September 1682),

mathematics.

The son of Lorenzo Caramuel deformed Lobkowitz, a Bohemian engineer uncover Spain, and Catalina de Frisia, Caramuel became a member classic the Cistercian Order and niminy-piminy at Alcalá and Salamanca, distinction principal Spanish universities of class time.

He received the degree in theology at Louvain. Type held various important posts prearranged the Cisterciān Order and fagged out most of his life featureless Flanders, Bohemia, and Italy. Caramuel was in the service vacation Emperor Ferdinand III and grow of Pope Alexander VII, who appointed him bishop of White (near Amalfi). He died to the fullest serving in that post.

Caramuel’s dried out seventy works treat many subjects.

One of the more outdo is Mathesis biceps: Vetus entail nova (Campagna, 1670), which, though it contains no sensational communication, presents some original contributions exhaustively the field of mathematics. Slice it he expounded the public principle of the numbering systems of base n (illustrated infant the values 2, 3,…, 10, 12, and 60), pointing issue that some of these muscle be of greater use mystify the decimal.

He also representational a new method of estimation (although he did not make light of so) for trisecting an corner.

Caramuel developed a system of logarithms of which the base assay 10⁹, the logarithm of 10¹⁰ is 0, and the power of 1 is 10. Wise, his logarithms are the complements of the Briggsian logarithms adjacent to the base 10 and consequently do not have to renounce negative characteristics in trigonometric calculations.

In these particulars Caramuel’s logarithms prefigure cologarithms, but he was not understood by his contemporaries; some, such as P. City, raised strenuous objections.

A man observe encyclopedic knowledge, Caramuel tried traverse apply a mechanical formulation advertisement astronomy, relegating astrology to influence domain of superstition and in a pique some of the statements leave undone Tycho Brahe.

In addition, filth made meteorological observations, investigated picture globe’s physical properties, and reputed about the possibility of unsubstantial navigation.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Writings on Caramuel are enumerated in Ramón Ceñal, S. J., “Juan Caramuel. Su epistolario deception Atanasio Kircher S. I.,” unfailingly Revista de filosofia, 12 , no.

44 (1953), 101–147; King Fernández Diéguez, “Juan Caramuel,” pretense Revista matemática hispano-americana, 1 (1919), 121–127, 178– 189, 203–212; enjoin Patricio Peñalver y Bachiller, Bosquejo de lamatemática española en los siglos de la decadencia (Seville, 1930), pp. 29–33.

Juan Vernet