Mathematician:Giovanni Girolamo Saccheri

Mathematician

Italian Jesuit priest, scholastic philosopher, and mathematician.

Attempted (but failed) to prove Euclid's fifth postulate by means of Reductio ad Absurdum, and in the process narrowly missed discovering a non-Euclidean geometry.

Nationality

Italian

History

• Born: 5 September 1667 in San Remo, Genoa (now Italy)
• Died: 25 October 1733 in Milan (now Italy)

Theorems and Definitions

• Khayyam-Saccheri Quadrilateral (with Omar Khayyam)
• Saccheri-Legendre Theorem (with Adrien-Marie Legendre)

Results named for Giovanni Girolamo Saccheri can be found here.

Definitions of concepts named for Giovanni Girolamo Saccheri can be found here.

Publications

• 1693: Quaesita Geometrica
• 1697: Logica Demonstrativa
• 1708: Neo-Statica
• 1733: Euclides ab Omni Naevo Vindicatus ("Euclid Cleared from Every Stain")

Sources

• John J. O'Connor and Edmund F. Robertson: "Giovanni Girolamo Saccheri": MacTutor History of Mathematics archive

• 1998: David Nelson: The Penguin Dictionary of Mathematics (2nd ed.) ... (previous) ... (next): Saccheri, Girolamo (1667-1733)
• 2008: David Nelson: The Penguin Dictionary of Mathematics (4th ed.) ... (previous) ... (next): Saccheri, Girolamo (1667-1733)