Luca Pacioli

Luca Pacioli was an Italian mathematician and is famously known as The Father of Accounting
and Bookkeeping due to his tremendous contributions in the field of accounting. He was born
to Bartolomeo Pacioli in Sansepulcro, Tuscany in 1445. He was not raised by his parents but
the Befolci family in a small town named as Sansepolcro.

Friar Pacioli was skilled in many things: commerce, chess, mathematics, and even magic. But
today he is remembered for being the most famous accountant in history. They call him the
father of double-entry bookkeeping, even though he wasn’t the one who invented it.

One of the major contributions of Paciolo was

a book on accounting that brought revolution
in this field. His discoveries and detailed works
were on

1. Ethics of accounting
2. The rule of 72 (a method of determining
economic returns)
3. Use of ledgers,
4. Journals and
5. Bookkeeping
6. Balance sheet and
7. Income statement
8. The method of Venice

What was Luca Pacioli’s contribution to mathematics?

That same year Ludovico Sforza became Duke of Milan and around 1496 he invites Pacioli to
come to his court in Milan to teach mathematics. In Milan Luca Pacioli began to work with
Leonardo da Vinci, who was a painter and engineer at Ludovico’s court.

It is not that Pacioli invented this method, but he did document it and added elements to
perfect it. His legacy, which leads to his being called the ‘father of accounting’, is summed up
in Tractus XI- Particularis de computis et scripturis.

What were the contributions of Diophantus and Luca Pacioli to mathematics?

Other of his contributions can be seen in the figures, which today are known as prisms and
pyramids, on their lateral columns (faces). In them, Pacioli suggests that the relationship
between the names of the lateral columns and their respective pyramid be in reference to the
sides of the base polygon.