Gregory St. Vincent

“{{MacTutor Biography|id=Saint-Vincent|title=Gregorius Saint-Vincent}}”

“Grégoire de Saint-Vincent... was a Jesuit, taught mathematics in Rome and Prag (1629-1631), and was afterwards called to Spain by Phillip IV as tutor to his son... He wrote two works on geometry [Principia Matheseos Univerales (1651); Exercitationum Mathematicarum Libri quinque (1657)], giving in one of them the quadrature of the hyperbola referred to its asymptotes, and showing that as the area increased in arithmetic series the abscissas increased in geometric series.”

“No one ever squared the circle with so much ability or (except for his principal object) with so much success.”

“Gregory St. Vincent is the greatest of circle-squarers, and his investigations led him into many truths: he found the property of the arc of the hyperbola which led to Napier's logarithms being called hyperbolic. Montucla says of him, with sly truth, that no one ever squared the circle with so much genius, or, excepting his principal object, with so much success.”

“Liber hic fere Lemmaticus est, quemadmodum & alter, qui de Circulorum variis proprietatibus tractat. Porrò quo magis materia Lectori admanum sint, omnem in tres partes dividere placuit.”