Gabriele Manfredi

Gabriele Manfredi (1681 to 1761) was an Italian mathematician who worked in the field of calculus. Born in Bologna, then in the Papal States, the son of the notary Alfonso Manfredi and Anna Maria Fiorini, he had a family of scientists: his elder brother Eustachio turned from law to science, he and his brother Eraclito studied medicine, a fourth brother Emilio became a Jesuit preacher, and his two sisters Maddalena and Teresa were well educated and collaborated in the work. He grew uncomfortable with anatomy and turned to other subjects before he and Eustachio were introduced to differential calculus by the physicist Domenico Guglielmini. At the University he belonged to a group of young men interested in Cartesian geometry and differential calculus, with experiments and astronomical observation, among them Eustachio, Vittorio Francesco Stancari and Giuseppe Verzaglia, and he developed the most advanced mathematics of them. Eustachio inclined to astronomy while Gabriele studied the works of Leibniz and the Bernoullis on infinitesimal calculus. After graduating he went to Rome at the end of 1702 as librarian to Cardinal Pietro Ottoboni, helping him build a sundial at Santa Maria degli Angeli e dei Martiri and reform the Gregorian calendar.