André Tacquet

André Tacquet (Antwerp June 23, 1612–December 22, Antwerp 1660) was a Flemish mathematician. His work prepared ground for the eventual discovery of the calculus.

He was born in Antwerp, and entered the Jesuit Order in 1629. From 1631 to 1635, he studied mathematics, physics and logic at Leuven. Two of his teachers were Saint-Vincent and Francois d'Aguilon.

Tacquet became a brilliant mathematician of international fame and his works were often reprinted and translated (into Italian and English). He helped articulate some of the preliminary concepts necessary for Isaac Newton and Gottfried Leibniz to recognize the inverse nature of the quadrature and the tangent. He was one of the precursors of the infinitesimal calculus, developed by John Wallis. His most famous work, which influenced the thinking of Blaise Pascal and his contemporaries, is "Cylindricorum et annularium" (1651). In this book Tacquet presented how a moving point could generate a curve and the theories of area and volume.

He died in Antwerp.

Bibliography

*Opera Omnia Cylindricorum et Annularium (Antwerp, 1651)
*Elementa Geometriae (Antwerp, 1654)
*Arithmeticae Theoria et Praxis (Louvain 1656)
*Cylindricorum et annularium liber V, (Antwerp 1659) [http://books.google.com/books?id=txYOAAAAQAAJ&dq=inpublisher:%22Jac.+Meursius%22 full text] Amsterdam,
*Elementa Euclideae, geometriae (Amsterdam 1725) [http://books.google.com/books?id=rA8OAAAAQAAJ&dq=Andr%C3%A9+Tacquet full text]

References

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* [http://www.faculty.fairfield.edu/jmac/sj/scientists/tacquet.htm André Tacquet, S.J. (1612 - 1660) and his treatment of infinitesimals]