António Cabreira

D. António Tomás da Guarda Cabreira de Faria e Alvelos Drago da Ponte (30 October 1868 – 21 November 1953) was a Portuguese mathematician, polygraph and publicist. A member of the aristocratic Cabreira family, António Cabreira was a claimant to the Miguelist noble titles of Count of Lagos and Viscount of Vale da Mata, which he used.

António Cabreira is notable for his vast published work on an extensive variety of different fields (among them mathematics and geometry — one of his papers posited a solution for the problem of squaring the circle, as well as that of circling the square, cubing the sphere, and sphering the cube — mechanics, astronomy, literature, art, anthropology, philosophy, sociology, history, archaeology, insurance, jurisprudence, politics, and military organisation), and for spearheading the creation of many ephemeral learned societies, chief among them the Academy of Sciences of Portugal (created in 1907 after dissension with the Lisbon Academy of Sciences) and the António Cabreira Institute (established in 1919).

Early life and education

António Cabreira was born at 4:30 p.m. on 30 October 1868, in the family home in Tavira, on the corner of Rua Borda de Água de Aguiar and Rua da Alegria (renamed in 1917, Rua Jacques Pessoa and Rua Dr. António Cabreira, respectively). He was the son of General Tomás António da Guarda Cabreira (1822–1886) and his wife D. Francisca Emília Pereira da Silva from Ponta Delgada; on his father's side, he was the grandson of Tomás António da Guarda Cabreira (1792–1834), a field marshal in the Miguelist army during the Portuguese Civil War, who had been granted the titles of Count of Lagos and Viscount of Vale da Mata by the Miguelist faction. António Cabreira was the younger brother of Colonel Tomás Cabreira (1865–1918), a Republican politician who taught chemistry at the Lisbon Polytechnic School and who briefly occupied the office of Minister of Finance in 1914.

António Cabreira was baptized at the Church of Saint Mary of the Castle, on 17 February 1869. In 1891, Cabreira became the Political Editor of the periodical A Nação, the official organ of the Legitimist Party. ), which provided primary and secondary education courses. Cabreira was at first occupied with the management of the institution; in 1899, he began teaching Rational Mechanics and Philosophy of Mathematics to the Institute's Science students.

In the wake of the generalised nationalist sentiment brought about after the 1890 British Ultimatum, António Cabreira became active in the Lisbon Geographic Society, vigorously promoting Portuguese colonialism. After the 1910 Revolution, the Republican authorities were quick to approve the statutes of the new Academy in an attempt to legitimise it into an official academy of the regime, but in due course, and especially after Braga's death in 1924, it started to lose its relative importance and fading into obscurity as the old Lisbon Academy was gradually assimilated into the new regime.

Nevertheless, the Academy was successively enlarged by the creation of "Annexed Institutes", with the intention of disseminating the Academy's "patriotic and educational work" throughout the Portuguese World. These included:

The Instituto Teofiliano ("Theophilian Institute"), established in 1912,

Criticism Caricature of António Cabreira studying a chamber pot, published in Bordalo Pinheiro's satirical periodical A Paródia in 1902. The text reads: "Do not be surprised by the presence of this object [...]. I am using it for the sake of convenience: while I can use the rim to test my new method for the division of the circumference, I can also use the inside to unload my ideas." Antonio Cabreira had an inflated sense of his own academic importance and of the significance of his work. Due to his prolific published monographs on a vast array of different areas of knowledge, he soon created a public image of great intellectual dynamism and exaggerated cultural protagonism. This was heightened by his frequent self-congratulatory publications and speeches, particularly one delivered to the Lisbon Academy of Sciences in 1922 and published under the title Discurso Comemorativo das suas Bodas de Prata Académicas e Epítome dos Trabalhos Apresentados na Academia das Ciências de Lisboa ("Commemorative Speech of His Academic Silver Jubilee and the Epitome of his Work Presented before the Lisbon Academy of Sciences").

His numerous published monographs frequently featured a title page framed by a sprawling full list of his honorary distinctions, mentioning each of his many memberships in national and international learned societies and were accompanied by fanciful photographic portraits of Cabreira in elaborate academic garb, decked in collars and decorations.

A bust of António Cabreira by sculptor Raul Xavier was unveiled in 1944 in the Public Park in Tavira, in the presence of Cabreira himself, on the occasion of his Academic Golden Jubilee. In 1942, Cabreira donated the house in which he was born (located on a street that currently bears his name) to the local City Council, as a suitable place to hold the Municipal Archive; it serves that purpose to this day. His personal archive, as well as the furniture in his personal study, was left to the Lisbon Geographic Society.

Distinctions National orders

Foreign orders

Confraternal orders António Cabreira was the main founder and promoter of the Order of Saint Mary of the Castle (Ordem de Santa Maria do Castelo), established on 20 December 1921, a confraternal order with the stated goals of exalting the memory of Paio Peres Correia, the knight of the Reconquista who was responsible for the military campaign that saw the fortified city of Tavira reconquered from the Almohad Caliphate in 1242, and preserving the Church of Saint Mary of the Castle, the town's mother church. As a descendant of Paio Peres Correia, António Cabreira had the rank of "Knight of Honour". The Order's statutes were approved by the Government, the Cardinal-Patriarch of Lisbon (António Mendes Belo), and the Bishop of Faro; however, by 1947, the Order was seemingly dormant and the State had forbidden its use in official ceremonies.