Luca Pacioli, Luca Pacioli

His first teacher was no less a person than the painter Piero della Francesca, who, typically for ItalianHumanism, masterfully connected mathematics, science and art. In 1464 Luca Pacioli became employed as a private teacher by a rich Venetian merchant by the name of Ailtonio de Rompiasi. Together with Rompiasi's sons he attended the lectures of the mathematician Domenico Bragadino in the Scuolo di Rialto, a school of great importance for the history of Aristotelianism. Most probably he also worked as Rompiasi's bookkeeper. In 1470 Pacioli stayed in Rome at the house of the famous architect, philosopher and mathematician Leon Battista Alberti. This move to Rome was advised by his teacher Piero, who had worked together with Alberti in the church of Sail Francesco in Rimini during the fifties. In 1473 Pacioli became a Franciscan Minor under the name Frater Lucas de Borgo San Sepulcro. Lauwers, Luc & Willekens, Marleen: "Five Hundred Years of Bookkeeping: A Portrait of Luca Pacioli" (Tijdschrift voor Economie en Management, Katholieke Universiteit Leuven, 1994, vol. XXXIX, issue 3, p.290) [2] In 1475, he started teaching in Perugia and wrote a comprehensive textbook in the vernacular for his students during 1477 and 1478. It is thought that he then started teaching university mathematics and he did so in a number of Italian universities, including Perugia, holding the first chair in mathematics in two of them. He also continued to work as a private tutor of mathematics and was, in fact, instructed to stop teaching at this level in Sansepolcro in 1491. In 1494, his first book to be printed, Summa de arithmetica, geometria, proportioni et proportionalita , was published in Venice. In 1497, he accepted an invitation from Lodovico Sforza (" Il Moro ") to work in Milan. There he met, collaborated with, lived with, and taught mathematics to Leonardo da Vinci. In 1499, Pacioli and Leonardo were forced to flee Milan when Louis XII of France seized the city and drove their patron out. Their paths appear to have finally separated around 1506. Pacioli died aged 70 in 1517, most likely in Sansepolcro where it is thought he had spent much of his final years.

Source: Wikipedia > Luca Pacioli