André Tacquet

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Cylindricorum et annularium libri , 1651

André Tacquet , also Andrea Tachenius, (born June 23, 1612 in Antwerp , † December 22, 1660 , ibid) was a Flemish Jesuit and mathematician.

Life

Tacquet was the son of Agnes Wandelen from Nuremberg and the well-off Antwerp merchant Pierre Tacquet, who died when Tacquet was a child. He grew up in Antwerp, attended the Jesuit school there and joined the Jesuit order in 1629. Then he was in Mechelen and from 1631 to 1635 he studied mathematics, physics and logic at the Jesuit College in Leuven , among others with the student of Grégoire de Saint-Vincent William Boelmans and François d'Aguilon . After graduating, he taught Greek and poetry in Bruges from 1637 to 1639 , before studying theology in Leuven from 1640 to 1644 while teaching mathematics at the same time. He taught mathematics at the Jesuit college in Leuven from 1644, from 1645 to 1649 in Antwerp, where he was ordained in 1646, from 1649 to 1655 he taught again in Leuven and from 1655 until his death in Antwerp, where he taught the Prince Henri Jules de Bourbon.

His books were mostly designed as textbooks for Jesuit colleges.

With his book Cylindricorum et Annularium (About cylinders and rings) he was one of the pioneers of differential calculus and influenced Blaise Pascal , for example . The book itself was influenced by Luca Valerio and Gregoire de Saint-Vincent and the study of Archimedes . It treats curves as being created by moving points and contains an early form of the main theorem of calculus (inverse relationship between tangent formation and integration).

He also wrote textbooks known for their clarity, of which his geometry textbook from 1654 in particular was widely distributed. There was material from Euclid and Archimedes. For example, he applied mathematics to fortification and wrote an astronomical textbook (in which he spoke out against the movement of the earth - on the one hand because there was no evidence and on the other because it contradicted the Bible). His geometry book has also been translated into English and Italian, has been re-edited by William Whiston , Rugjer Boskovic and Pieter van Musschenbroek , and has been praised as one of the best mathematics books ever by Henry Oldenburg , Secretary of the Royal Society.

He corresponded with Frans van Schooten and Christian Huygens . The moon crater Tacquet is named after him.

Fonts

  • Opera Omnia, 1669 (with his textbook Astronomia, the works Elementa Geometriae and Cylindricorum et Annularium, works on practical geometry, fortifications and astronomy)
  • Cylindricorum et Annularium libri IV; una cum dissertatione physico-mathematica de circularium volutatione per planum, Antwerp 1651, 1659
  • Elementa Geometriae planae ac solidae quibus accedunt selecta ex Archimede theoremata, Antwerp 1654, 1655, 1672
  • Arithmeticae Theoria et Praxis, Leuven 1656, Antwerp 1665, 1682

literature

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Moritz Cantor calls his Elements of Geometry a rather meager treatment of Euclid's Elements in the ADB and notes that Whiston's English translation (Cambridge 1708) had dominated English geometry lessons for over a century. There was also a translation into Greek in Vienna in 1805
personal data
SURNAME Tacquet, André
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Tachenius, Andrea
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Flemish mathematician
DATE OF BIRTH June 23, 1612
PLACE OF BIRTH Antwerp
DATE OF DEATH December 22, 1660
Place of death Antwerp