Background
Jean-Charles de la Faille was born on March 1, 1597, in Antwerp, Belgium. He was born in a noble family of merchants to Jean Charles de La Faille, seigneur de Rymcnam, and Marie van de Wouwere.
Jean Charles de la Faille by Anton van Dyck.
educator mathematician scientist
Jean-Charles de la Faille was born on March 1, 1597, in Antwerp, Belgium. He was born in a noble family of merchants to Jean Charles de La Faille, seigneur de Rymcnam, and Marie van de Wouwere.
La Faille received his early schooling at the Jesuit College of his native city.
On September 12, 1613, la Faille became a novitiate of the Jesuit order at Malines for two years. Afterward he was sent to Antwerp where he met Gregory of St. Vincent, who was renowned for his work on quadrature of the circle. La Faille was counted among Gregory’s disciples, and in 1620 he was sent to France to follow a course of theology at Dole, and to teach mathematics. After his return to Belgium in 1626, he taught mathematics at the Jesuit College of Louvain for the next two years. In 1629 he was appointed professor at the Imperial College in Madrid; he departed for Spain on March 23, 1629. In 1644 Philip IV appointed him preceptor to his son Don Juan of Austria, whom he also accompanied on his expeditions to Naples, Sicily, and Catalonia. He died in Barcelona in 1652, a month after the capture of the town by Don Juan.
La Faille owed his fame as a scholar to his tract Theoremata de centro gravitatis partium circuli et ellipsis, published at Antwerp in 1632. In it the center of gravity of a sector of a circle is determined for the first time. In the first nine propositions each is established step by step. He proved that the centers of gravity of a sector of a circle, of a regular figure inscribed in it, of a segment of a circle, or of an ellipse lie on the diameter of the figure. These theorems are founded on a postulate from Luca Valerio’s De centro gravitatis solidorum (1604). In his proofs, La Faille referred to Archimedes’ On the Equilibrium of Planes or Centers of Gravity of Planes.
La Faille was a Jesuit.
It is not known whether la Faille was married or not.
He was friends with the engineer and cartographer Michael Florent van Langren.