A mathematician born in Cremona, he entered the Camaldolese order at the monastery of S. Apollinare in Classe in Ravenna at the age of 16. In 1693 he moved to Rome and later to Florence, where he was able to cultivate, in addition to his theological studies, those in mathematics and geometry as well. Professor of philosophy and mathematics under Grand Duke Cosimo III de' Medici, he was elected a member of the Royal Society in 1709. In 1714 he was appointed to the Chair of Mathematics at the University of Pisa. Author of numerous works on geometry, he was one of the divulgers, in Italy, of the bases of modern infinitesimal calculus according to the new methods introduced by Gottfried Leibniz (1646-1716) and Isaac Newton (1642-1727). Noteworthy among his works are De infinitis infinitorum et infinite parvorum ordinibus (1710), Flores geometrici ex Rhodonearum, et cloeliarum Curvarum descriptione resultantes (1728) eand the Elementi geometrici piani e solidi di Euclide [Euclid's elements of plane and solid geometry] (1740).