Luca Pacioli

Lore & Background

Luca Pacioli was born between 1446 and 1448 in the Tuscan town of Sansepolcro, where he received an abbaco education in the vernacular. He moved to Venice around 1464, working as a tutor to a merchant's three sons while continuing his own education. Between 1472 and 1475, he became a Franciscan friar. In 1475 he began teaching in Perugia, becoming first chair in mathematics in 1477. He wrote a comprehensive textbook in the vernacular for his students. In 1494 his first book, Summa de arithmetica, geometria, Proportioni et proportionalita, was published in Venice. In 1497 he accepted an invitation from Duke Ludovico Sforza to work in Milan, where he met, taught mathematics to, collaborated with, and lived with Leonardo da Vinci. In 1499, Pacioli and Leonardo fled Milan when Louis XII seized the city. Their paths separated around 1506. Pacioli died at about age 70 on 19 June 1517, most likely in Sansepolcro.

Reader's Guide

Pacioli's significance rests on his 1494 Summa de arithmetica, which contained the first printed description of the double-entry accounting system used by Venetian merchants. This work described journals, ledgers, year-end closing entries, and a trial balance, and included account categories for assets, liabilities, capital, income, and expenses. The essentials of double-entry accounting have remained largely unchanged for over 500 years. Pacioli also published Divina proportione (1509), on the golden ratio and its application in architecture, with illustrations by Leonardo da Vinci. He was criticized by art historian Giorgio Vasari for incorporating without attribution the work of Piero della Francesca. Pacioli's treatise on chess, De ludo scachorum, was rediscovered in 2006. His accounting textbook was used internationally into the mid-16th century, and he is credited with revolutionizing business operations through improved efficiency and profitability.

Did You Know?

• Pacioli introduced the Rule of 72, using an approximation of 100*ln 2 more than 100 years before Napier and Briggs.
• His work De viribus quantitatis contains the first reference to card tricks and notes that Leonardo da Vinci was left-handed.
• Pacioli's Summa de arithmetica included exercises largely copied without credit from Piero della Francesca's earlier book Trattato d'abaco.
• A manuscript of Pacioli's chess treatise De ludo scachorum was rediscovered in 2006 in the library of Count Guglielmo Coronini-Cronberg in Gorizia.

Notable Quotes (Wikiquote)

"The quest for our origin is the sweet fruit's juice which maintains satisfaction in the minds of the philosophers." — Luca Pacioli "Books should be closed each year, especially in partnership because frequent accounting makes for long friendship." — Luca Pacioli "Galassi, Giuseppe. "Pacioli, Luca (c. 1445-c.1517)." In History of Accounting: an International Encyclopedia, edited by Michael Chatfield and Richard Vangermeersch. New York: Garland Publishing, 1996. pp. 445–447." — Luca Pacioli