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Pedro Nunes
Sign in to saveAlso known as Peter Nonius, Peter Nunez, Nonius Salaciensis, Pedro Nuñez, Pedro Nunes, o Núñez
Portuguese mathematician (1502–1578)
Key facts
- Born
- 1502, Alcácer do Sal , Portugal
- Died
- 11 August 1578 (aged 76), Coimbra , Portugal
- Occupations
- Mathematician , cosmographer , and professor
via Wikipedia infobox
Wikidata facts
- Instance of
- human
- Given name
- Peter
- Family name
- Nunes
- Gender
- male
- Citizenship
- Kingdom of Portugal
- Place of birth
- Alcácer do Sal
- Place of death
- Coimbra
- Occupation
- cartographer
- Educated at
- University of Coimbra
- Employer
- University of Lisbon
- Languages spoken
- Portuguese
- Field of work
- cartography
- Image
- Pedro Nunes (1882) - António Nunes Junior (Paços do Concelho de Lisboa).png
Show 8 more facts
- Commons category
- Pedro Nunes
- student
- João de Castro
- described by source
- Brockhaus and Efron Encyclopedic Dictionary
- maintained by WikiProject
- WikiProject Mathematics
- birth name
- Petrus Nonius
- name in native language
- Pedro Nunes
- date of birth
- 1497-00-00
- date of death
- 1578-08-11
Sources (3)
via Wikidata · CC0
~11 min read
Encyclopedic overview
Pedro Nunes ( Portuguese: [ˈpeðɾu ˈnunɨʃ]; Latin: Petrus Nonius; 1502 – 11 August 1578) was a Portuguese mathematician, cosmographer, and professor, probably from a New Christian (of Jewish origin) family.
Considered one of the greatest mathematicians of his time, Nunes is best known for being the first to approach navigation and cartography with mathematical tools. Among other accomplishments, he was the first to propose the idea of a loxodrome (a rhumb line), and was the inventor of several measuring devices, including the nonius (from which the Vernier scale was derived), named after his Latin surname.
Excerpted from Wikipedia’s “Pedro Nunes” article, available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 licence.