Pena, John

, a celebrated mathematician, who descended from an illustrious family of Aix, was born at Moustiers, in the diocese of Riez, in Provence, in 1530. He studied the belles lettres under Ramus, but is said to have afterwards instructed his master in mathematics, which science he taught with great credit in the royal college at Paris. He died Aug. 23, 1560, aged thirty. M. Pena left a Latin translation of Euclid’s “Catoptrica,” with a curious preface, and also employed his pen upon that geometrician’s other works, and upon an edition of the “Spherica” of Theodosius, Greek and Latin, Paris, 1558, 4to, c. ²