1404-1472

Italian Architect and Writer

Like many key figures in the history of mathematics during the Middle Ages, Leon Battista Alberti was not a professional mathematician, and the advances he made in that discipline were in service to another—in his case, architecture. Nonetheless, his contributions were of great importance and included the first general study on the laws of perspective (Della pittura, 1435) and a book on cryptography that includes the first use of a frequency table. Alberti also worked with Toscanelli dal Pozzo (1397-1482), who later provided the maps used by Christopher Columbus (1451-1506) for his now-famous first voyage on a project involving geometrical mapping.

Born in Genoa on February 14, 1404, Alberti was the illegitimate son of Lorenzo Alberti, a prominent Florentine who had been banished from his city three years before. He attended school at Padua, then enrolled at the University of Bologna...