Luca Pacioli

Luca Pacioli was born in Sansepulcro, in Tuscany. He was probably born during 1445.  He born in a poor family. He lived as a child with the Befolci family. This town is very much in the centre of Italy about 60 km north of the city of Perugia. As far as Pacioli was concerned, perhaps the most important feature of this small commercial town was the fact that Piero delta Francesca had a studio and workshop in there and delta Francesca spent quite some time there despite frequent commissions in other towns.

 In 1477 Pacioli began a life of travelling, spending time at various universities teaching mathematics, particularly arithmetic. He taught at the University of Perugia from 1477 to 1480 and while there he wrote a second work on arithmetic designed for the classes that he was teaching.

In 1489, after two years in Rome, Pacioli returned to his home town of Sansepolcro. During this time in Sansepolcro, Pacioli worked on one of his most famous books the Summa de arithmetica, geometric, proportions et proportionalita. Pacioli travelled to Venice in 1494 to publish the Summa. The work gives a summary of the mathematics known at that time although it shows little in the way of original ideas. The work studies arithmetic, algebra, geometry and trigonometry and, despite the lack of originality, was to provide a basis for the major progress in mathematics.

Pacioli was appointed to teach geometry at the University of Pisa in Florence in 1500. He remained in Florence, teaching geometry at the university, until 1506.

During his time in Florence Pacioli was involved with Church affairs as well as mathematics. He was elected the superior of his Order in Romagna and then, in 1506, he entered the monstery of Santa Croce in Florence.

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