Giovanni Francesco Mauro Melchiorre Salvemini di Castiglione FRS (born January 11, 1704 Castiglione del Valdarno - October 11, 1791 Berlin) was an Italian mathematician and astronomer.
Contents |
He graduated from the University of Pisa where he studied law and mathematics, earning a doctorate in 1729. He fled the Inquisition to Switzerland in 1736.[1]
He taught in Lausanne. In 1745, he married Elizabeth du Fresne with whom he had three children, the only surviving child was Maximilian Friedrich Gustav Adolf Salvemini. In 1757, Elizabeth died, and he married Madeleine Raven two years later. In November 1787 he suffered a stroke.
In 1745, he was elected to the Royal Society. In 1765, Frederick the Great appointed him "Astronomer Royal", of the Observatory of Berlin. He received additional honors from foreign academies, was appointed a member of the Academy of Bologna in 1768, the Academy of Mannheim in 1777, the Academy of Padua in 1784, and the Academy of Prague in 1785. Succeeding Joseph-Louis Lagrange, he was appointed Director of the Mathematics Section, a role he held until his death.
He studied conic sections, cubic equations and problems of artillery. Among his latest publications mathematics note He is also known for the "Castillon's problem".[2]