Nicola Fergola

Nicola Fergola
Born	(1753-10-29)29 October 1753 Naples, Kingdom of Naples, today Italy
Died	21 June 1824(1824-06-21) (aged 70) Naples, Kingdom of Two Sicilies, today Italy
Resting place	Basilica di San Paolo Maggiore (Naples) 40.85144°N 14.25683°E / 40.85144; 14.25683
Alma mater	University of Naples
Scientific career
Fields	Mathematics
Institutions	Liceo del Salvatore University of Naples
Notable students	Vincenzo Flauti Annibale Giordano Vincenzo Cuoco

Nicola Fergola (29 October 1753 – 21 June 1824) was an Italian mathematician, professor in the university of Naples.

Life and work

Fergola studied in the Jesuit school; he then went to the university of Naples in 1767, where he studied mathematics under Giuseppe Marzucco. From 1770 he was teaching, by royal appointment, in the Liceo del Salvatore, a school founded in the same building where the Jesuit school had been (the Jesuit order was suppressed three years before).

Fergola founded his own private school in Naples in 1771. This school quickly gained a high reputation and many of the brightest boys of the country were sent to study there. Fergola taught and did research in both synthetic and analytic geometry, paying special attention to the physical application of calculus. The first works on the application of integral calculus to physical problems published in Naples where by him.

In 1779 Fergola was made a member of the Royal Academy of Sciences. Fergola's lectures on conic sections, published anonymously in 1791, were highly successful and adopted in colleges across the kingdom.

In 1799, during the Napoleonic period, he lived in Capodimonte but, when the Borbonic monarchy was restated, he was appointed to the mathematics chair in the university of Naples. In 1821 he suffered a stroke which left him disabled for the rest of his life. Fergola died in Naples on 21 June 1824.

Work

Fergola was one of the most important mathematician of the Kingdom of Naples in the late seventeenth century. A pioneer of projective geometry, is work was highly appreciated by Michel Chasles.

Fergola was one of the protagonists of an ideological quarrel among the Neapolitan scientists at the end of 18th and the first half of the 19th century. In the field of mathematics, the quarrel was about the use of synthetic or analytic methods. These polemics were coincident with the politically conservative conceptions of the former and the progressive views of the followers of the analytic method.

Fergola's close ties with the Bourbon dynasty proved fatal to his legacy. After the unification of Italy his school was accused of being a reactionary and his work was virtually forgotten. He was rediscovered at the end of the nineteenth century by Gino Loria.

Fergola wrote many treatises on mathematics and mechanics. His most important work is Prelezioni sui Principi matematici della filosofia naturale del cavalier Isacco Newton (Introduction to Mathematical Principles of the Natural Philosophy of Isaac Newton), published in two volumes in 1792 and 1793. It is interesting to see the religious point of view of the Newtonian force concept.

This religious conception is seen in all of Fergola's mathematical works. In 1839, was published Fergola's manuscript entitled Teorica de miracoli esposta con metodo dimostrativo in which Fergola tried to demonstrate the possibility of the miracles in a mathematical way: proposition, demonstration, theorem, lemma, scolium, etc.

Selected works

Prelezioni sui principi matematici della filosofia naturale del cavalier Isacco Newton, 1792

• Elementa physicae experimentalis usui tironum aptatae auctore Antonio Genuensi. Accedunt nonnullae dissertationes physico-mathematicae conscriptae a Nicolao Fergola (in Latin). Venetiis: apud Thomam Bettinelli. 1781.
• Prelezioni sui Principi matematici della filosofia naturale del cavaliere Isacco Newton. Napoli. 1792–93. Archived from the original on 1 April 2023.
  • Fergola, Nicola (1792). Prelezioni sui principi matematici della filosofia naturale del cavalier Isacco Newton. Vol. 1. Napoli: presso Giuseppe Maria Porcelli librajo e stampatore della R. Accad. militare. Retrieved 13 June 2015.
  • Fergola, Nicola (1792). Prelezioni sui principi matematici della filosofia naturale del cavalier Isacco Newton. Vol. 2. Napoli: presso Giuseppe Maria Porcelli librajo e stampatore della R. Accad. militare. Retrieved 13 June 2015.
• Trattato analitico delle sezioni coniche del signor N. F. Napoli: presso i Fratelli Chianese. 1814.
• Trattato analitico de' luoghi geometrici, di Nicola Fergola. Napoli: nella Stamperia dell'Accademia di Marina. 1818.
• Trattato analitico delle sezioni coniche e de' loro luoghi geometrici di Nicola Fergola pubblicato per la seconda volta da V. Flauti con sue note, ed aggiunte. In Napoli: nella stamperia per le opere del prof. Flauti. 1828.
• Teorica de' miracoli esposta con metodo dimostrativo seguita da un discorso apologetico sul miracolo di S. Gennaro e da una raccolta di pensieri su la filosofia e la religione. Napoli: Stamperia di V. Flauti. 1839.
• Trattato analitico delle sezioni coniche e de' loro luoghi geometrici di Nicola Fergola pubblicato per la seconda volta da V. Flauti con sue note, ed aggiunte. In Napoli: nella stamperia per le opere del prof. Flauti. 1840.
• Della invenzione geometrica opera postuma, di Nicola Fergola; ordinata, compiuta, e corredata d'importanti note dal prof. V. Flauti, aggiuntovi un esercizio di problemi geometrici risoluti con gli antichi, ed i moderni metodi, In Napoli: Nella stamperia dell'autore, 1842 (on-line).
• Istituzioni di meccanica e d'idromeccanica. Napoli: Sebeto. 1843.
• Divinazione del principio fondamentale pe' geometri antichi in risolvere i problemi di massimo e minimo: memoria tratta da' manoscritti di Nicola Fergola da Vincenzo Flauti segretario perpetuo dell'Accademia delle scienze e presentata ad essa nella I tornata del gennaio 1858. Napoli: Stamperia di A. De Pascale. 1861.

Bibliography

• Ferraro, Giovanni; Palladino, Franco (1993). "Sui manoscritti di Nicolò Fergola (1753-1824)". Bollettino di Storia delle Scienze Matematiche-Unione Matematica Italiana. XIII (2): 147–197.
• Botazzini, U. (1994). "The Italian States". In Ivo Grattan-Guinness (ed.). Companion Encyclopedia of the History and Philosophy of the Mathematical Sciences. London: Routledge. pp. 1495–1504. ISBN 0-415-09238-8.
• Fazzini, Antonio (1836). "Niccolo Fergola". Poliorama Pittoresco (in Italian): 305–307.
• Mazzotti, Masimo (2002). "The Making of the Modern Engineer". In Mordechai Feingold (ed.). History of Universities: Volume XVII. Oxford University Press. pp. 121–161. ISBN 0-19-925636-5.
• Mazzotti, Masimo (1998). "The Geometers of God: Mathematics and Reaction in the Kingdom of Naples" (PDF). Isis. 89 (4): 674–701. doi:10.1086/384160. hdl:10036/31212. ISSN 0021-1753. JSTOR 236738. S2CID 143956681.
• Capobianco, Giovanni; Ferraro, Giovanni (2001). The denied memory. The fate of Fergola's school among mathematical controversies, social tensions, and political conflicts. Alessandria: Edizioni dell'Orso. ISBN 978-88-3613-148-8. ISSN 2724-0223.
• Mazzotti, Massimo (2023). Reactionary Mathematics: A Genealogy of Purity. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. ISBN 978-0-226-82674-5.
• O'Connor, John J.; Robertson, Edmund F., "Nicola Fergola", MacTutor History of Mathematics Archive, University of St Andrews

External links

• Nastasi, Pietro (1996). "FERGOLA, Nicola". Dizionario Biografico degli Italiani, Volume 46: Feducci–Ferrerio (in Italian). Rome: Istituto dell'Enciclopedia Italiana. ISBN 978-88-12-00032-6. Retrieved 8 August 2015.
• Badolati, E. (2023). "Fergola, Nicola". In P.D. Nicholson; J.L. Bartlett (eds.). Biographical Encyclopedia of Astronomers. New York, NY: Springer. p. 1. Bibcode:2023bea..book...30B. doi:10.1007/978-1-0716-0738-1_100704-1. ISBN 978-1-0716-0738-1.