Giovanni Ceva

Giovanni Ceva, who lived from 1647 to 1734, was an Italian mathematician widely known for proving Ceva's theorem in elementary geometry, which he published in 1678 in De lineis rectis se invicem secantibus statica constructio. Born in Milan, he was first educated at the Jesuit Brera College, where his brother Tommaso, a poet and mathematician, later taught, and then studied mathematics and geometry at the University of Pisa under pupils of Borelli. After a short time teaching there he returned to Milan, and by 1684 he had settled in Mantua as mathematician and engineer at the Gonzaga court, becoming professor of mathematics at the University of Mantua in 1686. He also rediscovered Menelaus's theorem, anticipated the infinitesimal calculus in Geometria Motus, wrote one of the first books on mathematical economics, and used his hydraulics knowledge to help stop a plan to divert the river Reno into the Po.