[231] The full title has some interest: _Vera circuli et hyperbolae quadratura cui accedit geometriae pars universalis inserviens quantitatum curvarum transmutationi et mensurae. Authore Jacobo Gregorio Abredonensi Scoto ... Patavii_, 1667. That is, James Gregory (1638-1675) of Aberdeen (he was really born near but not in the city), a good Scot, was publishing his work down in Padua. The reason was that he had been studying in Italy, and that this was a product of his youth. He had already (1663) published his _Optica promota_, and it is not remarkable that his brilliancy brought him a wide circle of friends on the continent and the offer of a pension from Louis XIV. He became professor of mathematics at St Andrews and later at Edinburgh, and invented the first successful reflecting telescope. The distinctive feature of his _Vera quadratura_ is his use of an infinite converging series, a plan that Archimedes used with the parabola. [232] Jean de Beaulieu wrote several works on mathematics, including _La lumiere de l'arithmetique_ (n.d.), _La lumiere des mathematiques_ (1673), _Nouvelle invention d'arithmetique_ (1677), and some mathematical tables. [233] A just estimate. There were several works published by Gerard Desargues (1593-1661), of which the greatest was the _Brouillon Proiect_ (Paris, 1639). There is an excellent edition of the _Oeuvres de Desargues_ by M. Poudra, Paris, 1864. [234] "A certain M. de Beaugrand, a mathematician, very badly treated by Descartes, and, as it appears, rightly so." [235] This is a very old approximation for [pi]. One of the latest pretended geometric proofs resulting in this value appeared in New York in 1910, entitled _Quadrimetry_ (privately printed). [236] "Copernicus, a German, made himself no less illustrious by his learned writings; and we might say of him that he stood alone and unique in the strength of his problems, if his excessive presumption had not led him to set forth in this science a proposition so absurd that it is contrary to faith and reason, namely that the circumference of a circle is fixed and immovable while the center is movable: on which geometrical principle he has declared in his astrological treatise that the sun is fixed and the earth is in motion." [237] So in the original. [238] Franciscus Maurolycus (1494-1575) was really the best mathematician produced by Sicily for a long period. He made Latin translations of Theodosius, Menelaus, Euclid, Apollonius, and Archimedes, and wrote on cosmography and other mathematical subjects. [239] "Nicolaus Copernicus is also tolerated who asserted that the sun is fixed and that the earth whirls about it; and he rather deserves a whip or a lash than a reproof."