Sigismondo Polcastro (1384–1473) was an Italian

physician A physician (American English), medical practitioner (Commonwealth English), medical doctor, or simply doctor, is a health professional who practices medicine, which is concerned with promoting, maintaining or restoring health through th ...

and

natural philosopher Natural philosophy or philosophy of nature (from Latin ''philosophia naturalis'') is the philosophical study of physics Physics is the natural science that studies matter, its fundamental constituents, its motion and behavior throu ...

. He was born to a jurist father, Girolamo, of the ancient de Porcastris family of

Vicenza Vicenza ( , ; ) is a city in northeastern Italy. It is in the Veneto region at the northern base of the ''Monte Berico'', where it straddles the Bacchiglione River. Vicenza is approximately west of Venice and east of Milan. Vicenza is a th ...

, and Maddalena Volpe of

Padua Padua ( ; it, Padova ; vec, Pàdova) is a city and ''comune'' in Veneto, northern Italy. Padua is on the river Bacchiglione, west of Venice. It is the capital of the province of Padua. It is also the economic and communications hub of the ...

. Perhaps born in Vicenza, he moved to Padua while he was still a boy. He received a doctorate in arts from the

University of Padua The University of Padua ( it, Università degli Studi di Padova, UNIPD) is an Italian university located in the city of Padua, region of Veneto, northern Italy. The University of Padua was founded in 1222 by a group of students and teachers from B ...

in 1412, taught natural philosophy from 1419, obtained a doctorate in medicine in 1424, and taught medicine from 1426 to 1464 or 1465. He wrote several short medical works."POLCASTRO, Sigismondo" – article in the Italian Encyclopaedia of Science, Letters, and Arts
(in Italian) In 2016, he was pronounced the progenitor of the largest group of mathematicians in the

Mathematics Genealogy Project The Mathematics Genealogy Project (MGP) is a web-based database for the academic genealogy of mathematicians.. By 31 December 2021, it contained information on 274,575 mathematical scientists who contributed to research-level mathematics. For a ty ...

, which groups mathematicians by teacher–student mentoring relationships, via his student

Pietro Roccabonella Pietro is an Italian masculine given name. Notable people with the name include: People * Pietro I Candiano (c. 842–887), briefly the 16th Doge of Venice * Pietro Tribuno (died 912), 17th Doge of Venice, from 887 to his death * Pietro II Can ...

References

1384 births 1473 deaths Natural philosophers People from Vicenza University of Padua alumni Academic staff of the University of Padua 15th-century Italian writers {{Italy-med-bio-stub