Albert

Albert of Saxony

Born: 1316 in Helmstedt, Lower Saxony (now Germany)
Died: 8 July 1390 in Halberstadt, Saxony (now Germany)

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Albert studied at Prague and then at Paris. He taught at Paris from 1351 to 1362 becoming rector there in 1353. Albert became rector of the University of Vienna in 1365 and Bishop of Halberstadt from 1366 until his death.

Albert was mainly a transmitter of good mathematical ideas but he did contribute his own work to these. He wrote about the ideas of Bradwardine, Ockham, Oresme and others.

His books on logic are his best where he examined 254 logical paradoxes while his work on projectiles is, as such work was at that time, incorrect. Albert believed that a projectile fired horizontally will travel horizontally for a certain distance, then follow a curved path for a while, then fall vertically.

References:

  1. Dictionary of Scientific Biography
  2. Biography in Encyclopaedia Britannica
  3. M Clagett, Archimedes in the Middle Ages (Madison, Wis., 1964), 398-432.
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JOC/EFR February 1996