Tommaso Ceva facts for kids
Quick facts for kids
Tommaso Ceva
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Tommaso Ceva
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| Born | December 20, 1648 |
| Died | February 3, 1737 (aged 88) Milan, Duchy of Milan
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| Nationality | Italian |
| Parent(s) | Carlo Francesco Ceva and Paola Ceva (née de' Colombi) |
| Scientific career | |
| Fields | mathematics |
| Institutions | Brera College |
| Notable students |
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Tommaso Ceva (December 20, 1648 – February 3, 1737) was an Italian Jesuit mathematician from Milan. He was the brother of Giovanni Ceva. His work aided in spreading a knowledge of Newton's discovery of the law of gravitation.
Biography
Tommaso Ceva was born into a wealthy Milanese family in 1648. After studying at the Collegio di Brera, a Jesuit college in Milan, on 24 March 1663 he entered the Society of Jesus. He taught mathematics and rhetoric at the Jesuit College of Brera in Milan for thirty-eight years. His most famous student was Giovanni Girolamo Saccheri. He was one the main representatives of Celia Grillo Borromeo's Academia Vigilantium. Joseph I named Ceva Caesarian Theologian early in the 18th century.
His first scientific work, De natura gravium (1669), dealt with physical subjects - such as gravity and free fall - in a philosophical way. His only mathematical work, published in 1699 was the Opuscula Mathematica which dealt with geometry, gravity and arithmetic. Ceva designed an instrument to divide a right angle into a specified number of equal parts. In his Philosophia novo-antiqua (1704) Ceva defended scholasticism against the systems Descartes and Gassendi and tried to reconcile the best of ancient and modern natural philosophy. The work comprises six dissertations, dealing with topics ranging from mathematics to cosmology and mechanics, and engages with live issues for the science of the time (Copernican theory; Descartes's physics and denial of animal souls; Gassendi's atomism).
He was also a noted poet and dedicated a significant amount of his time to this task. In the literary field Ceva shared the Arcadian reaction against marinism. His Latin poem Jesus Puer, dedicated to the Holy Roman emperor Joseph I, was translated into many languages including German and Italian. He was made a fellow of the Arcadia in 1718 and was in correspondence with Vincenzo Viviani and Luigi Guido Grandi. He was a close friend of the mathematician Pietro Paolo Caravaggio and his son. Ceva was a member of Celia Grillo Borromeo's Academy of the Vigilanti.
He died in Milan in 1737.
See also
In Spanish: Tommaso Ceva para niños
- List of Jesuit scientists
- List of Roman Catholic scientist-clerics
