Mathematical Treasure: Antoine Thomas’s Synopsis Mathematica

Antoine Thomas (1644–1709) was a Belgian astronomer, mathematician, and Jesuit who prepared this compendium textbook for missionaries to China while he was teaching at the University of Coimbra in Portugal and preparing to go to China himself. The two volumes of Synopsis Mathematica complectens varios tractatus quos huius scientiae tyronibus et Missionis Sinicae candidatis breviter et clare concinnavit, published in 1685, focused on the practical subjects of “mixed mathematics” and in particular led students through the astronomical observations and calculations that would be important in religious practice in China.

Thomas was disappointed in the quality of printing in the books that reached him in China, where he succeeded Father Ferdinand Verbiest in 1688, and he barely employed the book in his own teaching. Only a few dozen copies are known to have been used around the world.

Examples of some diagrams and figures given in the front of volume I:

Diagrams in volume II ranged from illustrations of simple machines to Tycho Brahe’s model of the universe.

Full digitizations of volume I and volume II from the collections of Bibliothèque Universitaire Moretus Plantin, Université de Namur, are available.

Index to Mathematical Treasures