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Clavius, Christopher (1538–1612)

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Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 January 2016

Douglas Jesseph
Affiliation:
University of South Florida
Lawrence Nolan
Affiliation:
California State University, Long Beach
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Summary

Clavius was the preeminent mathematician and astronomer in the Jesuit order in the sixteenth century. Very little is known about his early life, apart from the fact that he was born in the German region of Franconia, near the town of Bamberg. Even his name is a matter of conjecture: the Latinized “Clavius” has been suggested to derive from the German “Schlüssel” (key) or “Klau” (claw), but no convincing evidence as to his name is known to survive. Clavius entered the Jesuit order at Rome in 1555, admitted by its founder, Saint Ignatius of Loyola. He matriculated at the University of Coimbra in Portugal in 1556, where his mathematical talents were obvious, but the weakness of the Coimbran curriculum and instruction required him to be essentially self-taught in the subject. In May 1561 Clavius returned to Rome, where he began his study of theology at the Collegio Romano. Ordained in 1564, he began teaching mathematics (including astronomy) at the Collegio Romano in the same year; aside from a sojourn of several months to Messina in 1574 and a two-year stay in Naples in 1595–97, Clavius remained in Rome as professor of mathematics at the Collegio for the rest of his life.

Clavius's first published work was his influential Commentarius in Sphaeram Joannis de Sacro Bosco; it appeared in 1570 and was the standard textbook on astronomy for generations. Indeed, Tycho Brahe, Johannes Kepler, and Galileo Galilei were all influenced by it. Clavius's astronomical work made him highly instrumental in the calendar reform of 1582 that resulted in the introduction of the Gregorian calendar.

Clavius's primary contributions to pure mathematics came in the context of his Latin edition and extensive commentary on the Elements of Euclid, which first appeared in 1574 and was the main text used in the Jesuit mathematical curriculum. Descartes’ education at La Flèche exposed him to the works of Clavius, certainly through his edition of Euclid and quite probably to his 1608 Algebra (another standard textbook in the Jesuit curriculum). Descartes was not in the habit of citing any prior sources for his mathematical work, so the Cartesian oeuvre contains almost no references to Clavius.

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Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2015

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References

Baldini, Ugo. 1983. “Christoph Clavius and the Scientific Scene in Rome,” in Gregorian Reform of the Calendar: Proceedings of the Vatican Conference to Commemorate Its 400th Anniversary, 1582–1982, ed. Coyne, G. V., Hoskin, M. A., and Pedersen, O.. Vatican City: Pontifica Academia Scientarum, 137–69.Google Scholar
Busard, Hubert. 1971. “Clavius, Christoph,” in The Dictionary of Scientific Biography, vol. 3 (18 vols., 1970–90), Gillispie, C. C. and Holmes, F. L.. New York: Scribner, 311–12.Google Scholar
Homann, Frederick. 1983. “Christopher Clavius and the Renaissance of Euclidean Geometry,” Archivum Historicum Societatis Iesu 52: 233–46.Google Scholar
Knobloch, Eberhard. 1988. “Sur la vie et oeuvre de Christopher Clavius,” Revue d'histoire des sciences 41: 331–56.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Lattis, James. 1994. Between Copernicus and Galileo: Christoph Clavius and the Collapse of Ptolemaic Cosmology. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Naux, Charles. 1983a. “Le père Christophore Clavius (1537–1612): Sa vie et son oeuvre I: L'homme et son temps,” Revue des Questions Scientifiques 154: 55–67.Google Scholar
Naux, Charles. 1983b. “Le père Christophore Clavius (1537–1612): Sa vie et son oeuvre III: Clavius mathématicien,” Revue des Questions Scientifiques 154: 325–47.Google Scholar
Rommevaux, Sabine. 2005. Clavius. Une clé pour Euclide au XVIe siècle. Paris: Vrin.Google Scholar
Sasaki, Chikara. 2003. Descartes's Mathematical Thought, Boston Studies in the Philosophy of Science, vol. 237. Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic Publishers.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Smolarski, Dennis. 2002. “The Jesuit Ratio Studiorum, Christopher Clavius, and the Study of Mathematical Sciences in Universities,” Science in Context 15: 447–57.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

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