François d'Aguilon

François d'Aguilon (also d'Aguillon or in Latin Franciscus Aguilonius) (4 January 1567, Brussels – 20 March 1617, Tournai), was a Belgian Jesuit mathematician, physicist and architect.

He became a Jesuit in 1586. In 1611, he started a special school of mathematics, in Antwerp, which intended to perpetuate the mathematical research and study in the Jesuit society. This school produced geometers like André Tacquet and Jean Charles della Faille.

Illustration by Rubens for "Opticorum libri sex philosophis juxta ac mathematicis utiles", by François d'Aiguillon. It demonstrates how the projection is computed.

His book, Opticorum Libri Sex philosophis juxta ac mathematicis utiles (Six Books of Optics, useful for philosophers and mathematicians alike), published in Antwerp in 1613, was illustrated by famous painter Peter Paul Rubens. It was notable for containing the principles of the stereographic and the orthographic projections, and it inspired the works of Desargues and Christiaan Huygens.

He died in Antwerp.

See also

• List of Roman Catholic scientist-clerics

References

•  This article incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain: Chisholm, Hugh, ed. (1911). Encyclopædia Britannica (11th ed.). Cambridge University Press. 
• http://www.faculty.fairfield.edu/jmac/sj/scientists/aguilon.htm
• List of Jesuit scientists

Further reading

• Morère, J.E. (1970). "Aguilon, François d'". Dictionary of Scientific Biography. 1. New York: Charles Scribner's Sons. pp. 81. ISBN 0684101149. 
• Kuehni, Rolf G. (2003). "On the Source of d’Aguilon’s Arc Color Mixture Diagram" (PDF). http://www4.ncsu.edu/~rgkuehni/PDFs/Boethius.pdf.