Giovanni Ceva

Giovanni Ceva

Born: 1647 in Milan, Italy
Died: 1734 in Mantua, Italy

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Giovanni Ceva was Professor of mathematics at the University of Mantua most of his life and worked on geometry and discovered one of the most important results on the synthetic geometry of the triangle between Greek times and the 19th Century. The theorem states that lines from the vertices of a triangle to the opposite sides are concurrent precisely when the product of the ratio the sides are divided is 1.

Ceva also rediscovered and published Menelaus's theorem. He also studied applications of mechanics and statics to geometric systems. Although he wrongly concluded that the periods of oscillation of 2 pendulums was in the same ratio as their lengths he later corrected the error.

In Geometria Motus (1692) he, to some extent, anticipated the infinitesimal calculus. De Re Nummaria in 1711 is one of the first works in mathematical economics.

References elsewhere in this archive:

Show me Ceva's theorem

Show me Menelaus's theorem

Other Web sites:

Rice University, USA

References:

  1. Dictionary of Scientific Biography
  2. G Loria, Per la biografia de Giovanni Ceva, Rendiconti dell'istituto lombardo di scienze et lettere 48 (1915), 450-452. 
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JOC/EFR February 1996