Llull

Ramon Llull

Born: 1235 in Majorca, Spain
Died: 1316 in (probably) Tunis, Tunisia

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Llull was brought up at the royal court of Majorca. He left there in about 1265 after he experienced mystical visions of Christ on the Cross. He then undertook missionary work in North Africa and Asia Minor.

Llull's main work is the Ars magna (1305-08), comprising of a number of treatises. Llull used logic and mechanical methods involving symbolic notation and combinatorial diagrams to relate all forms of knowledge. This work makes him a precursor of combinatorics.

His work also had a great influence on Leibniz.

References:

  1. M Gardner, Logic Machines and Diagrams (2nd ed., 1982).
  2. J Fauvel and R J Wilson, The Lull before the storm: Combinatorics and religion in the Renaissance, Bulletin of the ICA 11 (1994), 49-58.
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JOC/EFR February 1996