Joseph Bayma (November, 1816 in
Piedmont, Italy
it, Piemontese
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– February 7, 1892 at
Santa Clara, California
Santa Clara (; Spanish for " Saint Clare") is a city in Santa Clara County, California. The city's population was 127,647 at the 2020 census, making it the eighth-most populous city in the Bay Area. Located in the southern Bay Area, the cit ...
) was a mathematician, philosopher, and scientist. He is known for work relating to
stereochemistry
Stereochemistry, a subdiscipline of chemistry, involves the study of the relative spatial arrangement of atoms that form the structure of molecules and their manipulation. The study of stereochemistry focuses on the relationships between stereois ...
and mathematics.
He entered the
Society of Jesus
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, abbreviation = SJ
, nickname = Jesuits
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, founders ...
on February 5, 1832. He was in charge of the episcopal seminary of Bertinoro when political troubles in 1860 led to his move to England. At
Stonyhurst College
Stonyhurst College is a co-educational Catholic Church, Roman Catholic independent school, adhering to the Society of Jesus, Jesuit tradition, on the Stonyhurst, Stonyhurst Estate, Lancashire, England. It occupies a Grade I listed building. Th ...
he took up philosophy and taught it for some seven years. This led to his producing three volumes of "Realis Philosophia." These were for private presses, and the volumes are not reliable as evidence of his mature opinions.
In 1868 he left England for California. He believed technology could be abused but could improve society.
In California he would be Rector of Saint Ignatius' College, San Francisco, for three years, and is listed as a past President of the
University of San Francisco
The University of San Francisco (USF) is a private Jesuit university in San Francisco, California. The university's main campus is located on a setting between the Golden Gate Bridge and Golden Gate Park. The main campus is nicknamed "The Hil ...
. He resided at Santa Clara, teaching elementary mathematics there. He would work in Santa Clara until his death. At his death he left behind, in manuscript, an elaborate new edition of the "Realis Philosophia" which never saw the light. His published works are "Molecular Mechanics" (Cambridge, 1866); "The Love of Religious Perfection", originally in Italian, in the style of "The Imitation of Christ" (published in English, Dublin, 1863); articles in "The Catholic World", XVII–XXI (1873–75), the best printed account of his philosophy; two articles in the "Am. Cath. Q. Rev.", II (1877); and "A Discussion with an Infidel", being a review of Büchner's "Force and Matter" (New York, London, and Leamington, 1901). His elementary works on mathematics, all published in San Francisco, are "Algebra" (1890), "Geometry" (1895), "Analytical Geometry" (1887), "Plane and Spherical Trigonometry" (1886), and "Infinitesimal Calculus" (1889).
[
Father Bayma took the Venerable ]Bede
Bede ( ; ang, Bǣda , ; 672/326 May 735), also known as Saint Bede, The Venerable Bede, and Bede the Venerable ( la, Beda Venerabilis), was an English monk at the monastery of St Peter and its companion monastery of St Paul in the Kingdom o ...
for his model, and loved to refer to the old Breviary Lesson, which used to be read in England on St. Bede's day. It ran: "Bede nd Bayma toowas handsome of stature, grave of gait, rich and sonorous of voice, eloquent of speech, noble of countenance, a blend of affability and severity. He was affable to the good and devout, formidable to the proud and negligent. He was always reading, always writing, always teaching, always praying."[
To posterity he must be known by his "Molecular Mechanics", a ]metaphysical
Metaphysics is the branch of philosophy that studies the fundamental nature of reality, the first principles of being, identity and change, space and time, causality, necessity, and possibility. It includes questions about the nature of conscio ...
and mathematical work treating of the constitution of matter. With 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, ...
, Bayma reduces all matter to unextended points – centres of force acting in the inverse square of the distance – thus acting upon one another, but of course not touching, for Bayma abhorred continuous matter and upheld ''actio in distans''. These points were bound up into molecules, and molecules into bodies. Boscovich made his points, or elements, attractive at molar distances, repulsive at molecular. Bayma divides elements into attractive and repulsive, the former always attracting, the latter always repelling; the attractive elements preponderating in the nucleus of the molecule, the repulsive in the envelope. The work drew attention at Cambridge
Cambridge ( ) is a university city and the county town in Cambridgeshire, England. It is located on the River Cam approximately north of London. As of the 2021 United Kingdom census, the population of Cambridge was 145,700. Cambridge bec ...
, and at Trinity College, Dublin
, name_Latin = Collegium Sanctae et Individuae Trinitatis Reginae Elizabethae juxta Dublin
, motto = ''Perpetuis futuris temporibus duraturam'' (Latin)
, motto_lang = la
, motto_English = It will last i ...
. The author was advised to test his theories by ten years of experiments in chemistry and electricity.[ This did not occur in reality due to his death.
]
See also
*List of Jesuit scientists
This is a list of Catholic clergy throughout history who have made contributions to science. These churchmen-scientists include Nicolaus Copernicus, Gregor Mendel, Georges Lemaître, Albertus Magnus, Roger Bacon, Pierre Gassendi, Roger Joseph ...
*List of Roman Catholic scientist-clerics
A ''list'' is any set of items in a row. List or lists may also refer to:
People
* List (surname)
Organizations
* List College, an undergraduate division of the Jewish Theological Seminary of America
* SC Germania List, German rugby union ...
References
{{DEFAULTSORT:Bayma, Joseph
1816 births
1892 deaths
19th-century Italian mathematicians
Catholic clergy scientists
19th-century Italian Jesuits
Italian emigrants to the United States
Presidents of the University of San Francisco
Jesuit scientists