Luca Pacioli

Mark Fagan

The Father of Accounting

Fra Luca Bartolomeo de Pacioli (14471517) was an Italian

mathematician; Franciscan friar, collaborator with Leonardo da
Vinci and some label him as the Father of Accounting. He is
referred to as "The Father of Accounting and Bookkeeping"
because he was the first person to publish a work on the doubleentry system of book-keeping.
Luca Pacioli was born in1447 in Sansepolcro, Tuscany where he
received an abbaco education. This was education in the
vernacular rather than Latin and focused on the knowledge
required of merchants. His father was Bartolomeo Pacioli,
however Luca Pacioli was said to have lived with the Befolci
family as a child in his birth town Sansepolcro. He moved to
Venice around 1464, where he continued his own education while working as a tutor to the three
sons of a merchant. It was during this period that he wrote his first book, a book for the teaching
of arithmetic to the boys he was tutoring. Between 1472 and 1475, he became a Franciscan friar.
In 1475, he started teaching in Perugia, first as a private teacher, from 1477 holding the first
chair in mathematics. He wrote a comprehensive textbook in the vernacular for his students. He
continued to work as a private tutor of mathematics and was, in fact, instructed to stop teaching
at this level in Sansepolcro in 1491. In 1494, his first book that he printed, Summa de
arithmetica, geometria was released. Proportioni et proportionalita, was published in Venice. In
1497, he accepted an invitation from Duke Ludovico Sforza to work in Milan. There he met,
taught mathematics to, collaborated and lived with
Leonardo da Vinci with them becoming good friends.
In 1499, Pacioli and Leonardo were forced to flee
Milan when Louis XII of France seized the city and
drove out their patron. Their paths appear to have
finally separated around 1506. Pacioli died at about
the age of 70 in 1517, most likely in Sansepolcro
where it is thought that he had spent much of his final
years.