Pierre de Carcavi, a native of Lyons, died at Paris in 1684. He was a member of parliament, royal librarian, and member of the Académie des Sciences. His attempt to prove the impossibility of the quadrature appeared in 1645. He was a frequent correspondent of Descartes.
Cavendish (1591-1654) was Sir (not Lord) Charles. He was, like De Morgan himself, a bibliophile in the domain of mathematics. His life was one of struggle, his term as member of parliament under Charles I being followed by gallant service in the royal army. After the war he sought refuge on the continent where he met most of the mathematicians of his day. He left a number of manuscripts on mathematics, which his widow promptly disposed of for waste paper. If De Morgan's manuscripts had been so treated we should not have had his revision of his Budget of Paradoxes.
Marin Mersenne (1588-1648), a minorite, living in the cloisters at Nevers and Paris, was one of the greatest Franciscan scholars. He edited Euclid, Apollonius, Archimedes, Theodosius, and Menelaus (Paris, 1626), translated the Mechanics of Galileo into French (1634), wrote Harmonicorum Libri XII (1636), and Cogitata physico-mathematica (1644), and taught theology and philosophy at Nevers.
Johann Adolph Tasse (Tassius) was born in 1585 and died at Hamburg in 1654. He was professor of mathematics in the Gymnasium at Hamburg, and wrote numerous works on astronomy, chronology, statics, and elementary mathematics.
Johann Ludwig, Baron von Wolzogen, seems to have been one of the early unitarians, called Fratres Polonorum because they took refuge in Poland. Some of his works appear in the Bibliotheca Fratrum Polonorum (Amsterdam, 1656). I find no one by the name who was contributing to mathematics at this time.
Descartes is too well known to need mention in this connection.
Bonaventura Cavalieri (1598-1647) was a Jesuit, a pupil of Galileo, and professor of mathematics at Bologna. His greatest work, Geometria indivisibilibus continuorum nova quadam ratione promota, in which he makes a noteworthy step towards the calculus, appeared in 1635.
Jacob (Jacques) Golius was born at the Hague in 1596 and died at Leyden in 1667. His travels in Morocco and Asia Minor (1622-1629) gave him such knowledge of Arabic that he became professor of that language at Leyden. After Snell's death he became professor of mathematics there. He translated Arabic works on mathematics and astronomy into Latin.
[189] It would be interesting to follow up these rumors, beginning perhaps with the tomb of Archimedes. The Ludolph van Ceulen story is very likely a myth. The one about Fagnano may be such. The Bernoulli tomb does have the spiral, however (such as it is), as any one may see in the cloisters at Basel to-day.
[190] Collins (1625-1683) was secretary of the Royal Society, and was "a kind of register of all new improvements in mathematics." His office brought him into correspondence with all of the English scientists, and he was influential in the publication of various important works, including Branker's translation of the algebra by Rhonius, with notes by Pell, which was the first work to contain the present English-American symbol of division. He also helped in the publication of editions of Archimedes and Apollonius, of Kersey's Algebra, and of the works of Wallis. His profession was that of accountant and civil engineer, and he wrote three unimportant works on mathematics (one published posthumously, and the others in 1652 and 1658).