Antoine de Laloubère

Antoine de Laloubère, who lived from 1600 to 1664, was a French Jesuit mathematician born at Rieux-Volvestre in Languedoc into an aristocratic family. He entered the Society of Jesus at Toulouse in 1620, was ordained around 1631 and later taught humanities, rhetoric, theology, Hebrew and mathematics at the Jesuit college of Toulouse. His main work, Quadratura circuli of 1651, calculates volumes and centres of gravity by inverting a rule of Paul Guldin, which places him among the forerunners of integral calculus, and he was the first mathematician to study the properties of the helix. In 1658 he quarrelled with Blaise Pascal over the cycloid, and his solution of Pascal prize problems was judged faulty, although Pascal charge of plagiarism now seems unfounded. He died at Toulouse in 1664.