Luigi Guido Grandi: The Mathematician Monk Who Challenged the Infinite

On October first, sixteen seventy-one, Luigi Guido Grandi was born in Cremona, Italy. He was a mathematician and an ordained priest of the Camaldolese order, and his academic field was mathematical analysis and geometry.

Grandi is most famous for his work on a seemingly simple yet profound mathematical puzzle: the infinite series one minus one plus one minus one, and so on. He argued that since this series could be grouped as zero plus zero plus zero, its sum should be zero. But if grouped differently, it could also appear to sum to one. Grandi even suggested this paradox could symbolize God's creation of something from nothing. Although his conclusions were controversial, his work with this series, known today as the Grandi's series, was highly influential. It forced questions about the convergence and divergence of infinite series and helped pave the way for a more rigorous understanding of the infinite in mathematics during the eighteenth century. Grandi also made significant contributions to geometry, particularly the study of curves like the rose curve, which he named.