Gregorio Fontana, born Giovanni Battista Lorenzo Fontana (7 December 1735 – 24 August 1803) was an Italian

mathematician A mathematician is someone who uses an extensive knowledge of mathematics in their work, typically to solve mathematical problems. Mathematicians are concerned with numbers, data, quantity, structure, space, models, and change. History O ...

and a religious of the Piarist order. He was chair of mathematics at the university of

Pavia Pavia (, , , ; la, Ticinum; Medieval Latin: ) is a town and comune of south-western Lombardy in northern Italy, south of Milan on the lower Ticino river near its confluence with the Po. It has a population of c. 73,086. The city was the capit ...

succeeding

Roger Joseph Boscovich Roger Joseph Boscovich ( hr, Ruđer Josip Bošković; ; it, Ruggiero Giuseppe Boscovich; la, Rogerius (Iosephus) Boscovicius; sr, Руђер Јосип Бошковић; 18 May 1711 – 13 February 1787) was a physicist, astronomer, ...

. He has been credited with the introduction of

polar coordinates In mathematics, the polar coordinate system is a two-dimensional coordinate system in which each point on a plane is determined by a distance from a reference point and an angle from a reference direction. The reference point (analogous to th ...

.Marie-Nicolas Bouillet and Alexis Chassang ''Gregorio Fontana'' in ''Dictionnaire universel d’histoire et de géographie'', 1878 His brother was the

physicist A physicist is a scientist who specializes in the field of physics, which encompasses the interactions of matter and energy at all length and time scales in the physical universe. Physicists generally are interested in the root or ultimate caus ...

Felice Fontana Abbé Gasparo Ferdinando Felice Fontana (15 April 1730 – 9 March 1805) was an Italian polymath who contributed to experimental studies in physiology, toxicology, and physics. As a physicist he discovered the water gas shift reaction in 1780. He ...

(1730–1805).

Works

* * * * * * Gregorio Fontana – Dissertazione idrodinamica sopra il quesito cercar, 1775 - BEIC 1519402.jpg, ''Dissertazione idrodinamica'', 1775 Gregorio Fontana – Ricerche sopra diversi punti concernenti l'analisi infinitesimale e la sua applicazione alla fisica, 1793 – BEIC 4267569.jpg, ''Ricerche sopra diversi punti concernenti l'analisi infinitesimale e la sua applicazione alla fisica'', 1793

References

University of Pavia faculty 18th-century Italian mathematicians 1735 births 1803 deaths Fellows of the Royal Society {{Italy-mathematician-stub