The Autobiography of Leonardo Pisano

For the mathematical historian interested in biographical detailss Leonardo Pisano, better known to readers of this journal as Fibonacci, was a frustratingly modest genius. In his extant writings he tells us next to nothing of himself. In only one place, the second paragraph of the 1228 edition of his revised Liber Abbaci (Book of Calculation), first published in 1202., does he convey to us information about his earlier life; and even then the information, given merely as an incidental backdrop for his explanation of his purpose in writing the Liber, is very scanty and lamentably lacking in the precision which he displays in his mathematical elucidations. This second paragraph had, in the 1202 edition, been placed at the very beginning of the book; but in the revised, second edition of 1228, Leonardo wrote a dedication to the celebrated court astrologer of Frederick II, Michael Scott, who had requested a copy of the work, and thus this dedication became the work 1 s first paragraph, with the "autobiographical paragraph " following immediately after it. Today 1 s mathematicians are familiar with only this second, revised edition, since it is the one which Baldassare Boncompagni printed as Volume 1 of his two-volume Scritti di Leonardo Pisano (Rome, 1857-1862). Although Boncompagni knew of the existence of six manuscripts containing this autobiography, he based