Between Tradition and Innovation

"This book shows that the Flemish Jesuit Mathematics School had profound influence on the course of mathematics in the seventeenth century. Manuscript evidence shows that its professor, Gregorio of San Vicente SJ, had developed a logically sound integration method more than a decade before Cavalieri, but in the 1620s was forbidden to publish by his superiors. San Vicente's students were dispersed all over Europe, through them his methods influenced numerous mathematicians, Leibniz and Huygens among them. Many of these students became famous mathematicians in their own right. Ad Meskens convincingly shows, by carefully tracing their careers and outlining their biographies, that their contributions to mathematics, mechanics, optics and architecture were more often than not ground breaking"--