James Banker: "Three Geniuses and a Franciscan Friar"

More often celebrated as a painter, Piero della Francesca was also a pioneering mathematician. This lecture discusses Piero’s mathematical achievements, focusing on his precocious mastery of the teachings of the Greek geometrician Archimedes. Shortly after his death, Luca Pacioli, a Franciscan friar, published two of Piero’s treatises under his own name and conveyed Piero’s knowledge of geometry to Leonardo da Vinci, who later became an expert in the subject. This lecture is made possible by the Robert H. Smith Family Foundation.