Giuseppe Biancani

Giuseppe Biancani (1566 to 1624), in Latin Josephus Blancanus, was an Italian Jesuit astronomer, mathematician and selenographer, after whom the crater Blancanus on the Moon is named. He was one of the most able and respected Catholic astronomers of his day, and his main work, Sphaera Mundi, was republished at least four times in the seventeenth century. Born in Bologna, he entered the Jesuit Order in 1592, studied at the College of Brescia with Marco Antonio De Dominis and at the Academy of Mathematics in the Roman College with Clavius, and lived in Padua between 1596 and 1599, where he befriended Galileo. After the Jesuits were expelled from the Republic of Venice in 1606 he was sent to the College of Parma, where he taught mathematics until his death. His pupils included Niccolo Cabeo, Niccolo Zucchi, Mario Bettinus and Giovanni Battista Riccioli. His Aristotelis loca mathematica of 1615 discussed the nature of the mathematical sciences.