Sigismondo Polcastro

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Sigismondo Polcastro (1384–1473) was an Italian physician and natural philosopher. He was born to a jurist father, Girolamo, of the ancient de Porcastris family of Vicenza, and Maddalena Volpe of Padua. Perhaps born in Vicenza, he moved to Padua while he was still a boy.[1]

He received a doctorate in arts from the University of Padua 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.[1][2]

In 2016, he was pronounced the progenitor of the largest group of mathematicians in the Mathematics Genealogy Project, which groups mathematicians by teacher–student mentoring relationships,[3] via his student Pietro Roccabonella.[4]

References[edit]

  1. ^ a b "POLCASTRO, Sigismondo" – article in the Italian Encyclopaedia of Science, Letters, and Arts (in Italian)
  2. ^ Paul F. Grendler (2002), The Universities of the Italian Renaissance, JHU Press, pp. 24–25, ISBN 0801866316
  3. ^ Davide Castelvecchi (2016), "Majority of mathematicians hail from just 24 scientific 'families'", Nature, 537 (7618): 20–21, Bibcode:2016Natur.537...20C, doi:10.1038/nature.2016.20491, PMID 27582203, S2CID 1372531
  4. ^ Sigismondo Polcastro, Mathematics Genealogy Project, retrieved 30 September 2016