LITERATURE
burning-glasses were considered quite diabolical. He wrote Promotus Archimedes, seu de variis corporum generibus gravitate et magnitudine comparatis (Rome, 1603), and many other mathematical works. He is said to have applied geometry to algebra before Des Cartes, and to have been the first to discover equations of the fourth degree. He died in 1627. Boskovic was born in 1711, and became a Jesuit at an early age. He obtained the professorship of mathematics in Rome, and measured the meridian between Rome and Rimini with the Englishman Maire. He made a map of the Papal States, and wrote a work on the molecular theory of matter, Theoria Philosophic Naturalis redacta ad unicam Legem Virium in Natura existentium. In 1759 he was sent to England on a diplomatic mission, where he made the acquaintance of Dr. Johnson, and was elected Fellow of the Royal Society, to whom he dedicated his Latin poem De Solis et Luna; Defectus. He afterwards travelled in Turkey for scientific purposes, and was then appointed Professor of Mathematics at Pavia (1764) and Director of the Brera Observatory. His vanity and egoism made him many enemies, and in 1770 he left Italy for Paris, where he was made Director of Optics to the Ministry of Marine, an office which he held for ten years. In 1783 he returned to Italy and published all his works. His health was failing, his reputation on the wane, and he soon fell into melancholy and madness, and died in 1787. Besides other works, he wrote the Element a Universe Mathesos, published in 1754.