Giovan Battista Nicolosi

Giovan Battista Nicolosi (14 October 161019 January 1670) was a Sicilian priest and geographer. Nicolosi proposed a new projection for the construction of the world map in two hemispheres, known today as the Nicolosi globular projection, in which the parallels and meridians are arcs of the circle and equidistant along the equator and central meridian.

Biography Early life

Giovan Battista Nicolosi was born in Paternò, on October 14, 1610, of poor parents. He was the second child in a family of ten siblings. where he devoted himself to the study of mathematics and geography and quickly gained favor with the city's most powerful families. In 1647 he returned to Rome, and was appointed chaplain at Santa Maria Maggiore. In 1652, possibly motivated by Nicolas Sanson's new collection of maps, the Sacred Congregation for the Propagation of the Faith (Propaganda Fide) hired Nicolosi to compose a new atlas. After twelve years of study and research, he published the Dell’Hercole e studio geografico, in two volumes with maps and directions for making maps and globes. This projection technique was suggested in the eleventh century by the Persian mathematician al-Bīrūnī. Nicolosi reinvented al-Bīrūnī's projection as a modification of Fournier's first projection. It is unlikely Nicolosi knew of al-Bīrūnī's work, and Nicolosi's name is the one usually associated with the projection. This became a standard method of showing the two hemispheres of Earth during the nineteenth century after the equatorial stereographic projection popularized by Gerardus Mercator finally fell into disuse.

There exists in the Biblioteca Casanatense a considerable collection of Nicolosi’s unpublished work. This includes a large chorographic map of all of Christendom, commissioned by Pope Alexander VII, as well as a full geographic description and map of the Kingdom of Naples, which was sent to Holy Roman Emperor Leopold I in 1654 and an important relation of his trip to Germany (Viagio di Germania in tante lettere al cardinale Rinaldo d’Este e Parentele della casa di Baden con le corone e principi di Europa).

Gallery of images