The life of Oronce Fine (Oronce Finé, Orontius Finaeus, Oronteus Finaeus) (1494-1555)
Not unexpectedly, given the way fringe
writers tend to ignore inconvenient facts, a great deal is known
about the biography of Oronce Fine. He was born in
Briançon (France) in 1494 and educated in Paris. After a
brief spell in prison in 1518, he earned a medical degree from
the Collège de Navarre in Paris in 1522, although he was
to follow a career as a mathematician. In 1524, he was once again
in prison and in the same year built an ivory sundial that still
exists. Like many mathematicians of the sixteenth century, Fine
was considered an expert on fortifications and worked on the
defences of Milan.
In 1531, he was appointed to the chair of mathematics at the Collège Royal in Paris. He wrote voluminously on scientific subject, his publications including treatises on astronomical instruments and astronomy (he suggested in 1520 that eclipses of the moon could be used to determine the longitude of places); he also invented a map projection, producing a map of the world in 1519 using it. He also drew the first domestically published map of France in 1525 and on another map of the world, drawn in 1531, the name Terra Australis appeared for the first time. Other productions include works on arithmetic and geometry. In 1544, he calculated the value of pi to be (22 2/9)/7, which he later refined to 47/15 and, in De rebus mathematicis of 1556, 3 11/78. In astronomy, he believed that the earth was at the centre of the universe (in common with most of his European contemporaries) and he built an astronomical clock in 1553.