Dantas Pereira

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José Maria Dantas Pereira ComC (1 October 1772 – 23 October 1836) was a Portuguese naval officer, fidalgo, educator and mathematician. Dantas Pereira is better known today for his 1800 paper Memoir of a Pasigraphy Project in which he promoted a system of perfect language and universal machine translation.

Biography

Dantas Pereira was born in Alenquer, Kingdom of Portugal, the son of Victorino António Dantas Pereira and Quiteria Margarida de Andrade.[1]

He joined the navy in the Company of Midshipmen as a midshipman on 10 September 1788, having attended the respective course with great brilliance. He was then examined for the rank of sea lieutenant in the presence of the sovereigns, in accordance with the customs of the time, and rose to the rank of second lieutenant.

In 1790 he was appointed professor of mathematics at the Royal Academy of Midshipmen, the institution that preceded what is now known as the Naval School, and teacher to Prince Pedro Carlos de Bourbon.

In 1800 he was appointed Company Commander of the Midshipmen.[lower-alpha 1] Dantas Pereira then played a decisive role in the Royal Company of Midshipmen, to which he gave all his dedication, enthusiasm and expertise, planning everything in detail with measures of great pedagogical significance.

In 1802 he created the Company's library. In 1807, as a captain of sea and war, and as part of the Napoleonic Invasions of the Iberian Peninsula, he sailed to Brazil on the Conde D. Henrique II, one of the ships that accompanied the Royal Family, taking with him some teachers, the flag and all the teaching material and furniture of the Company of Midshipmen.[2]

Dantas Pereira set up the Royal Academy of the Midshipmen at the São Bento Monastery in Rio de Janeiro. After its installation there, he dedicated himself to dynamising the library of this educational establishment, making it the first public library in Brazil.

In 1817 he reached the rank of chief of squadron, a general officer whose rank today corresponds to that of Counter admiral. In 1819 he returned to Portugal as a member of the Admiralty Council. Although a staunch absolutist, he served on the Council of State after the Liberal Revolution of 1820.

After the acclamation of King Miguel in 1828, he was appointed representative of the nobility in the Assembly of the Three States.

In order to promote the efficiency of teaching, Dantas Pereira tried to reorganise the Royal Navy, adapting it to the growing technical evolution that took place in the first quarter of the 19th century.

He was also one of the founders of the Royal Maritime Society, a scientific institution founded in 1798 which was responsible for drawing up hydrographic, military, geographical and hydraulic charts.

As well as his brilliant mathematical works, he was a distinguished academic, and some of his works are published in the Memórias of the Lisbon Academy of Sciences, of which he was a corresponding member from 1792. He was elected secretary of the Academy in 1823.

Dantas Pereira is the author of the first textbook containing references to elementary probability, Course of Studies for the Commerce and Exchequer (1798) and also of a method for the approximate calculation of the roots of algebraic equations (1799),[3] not very different from the method later published by William George Horner[4] in the Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society (1819).[5]

Due to his culture, conduct and prestige, he was elected a member of the Philosophical Society of Philadelphia in 1827.

After the victory of the liberal cause, he took refuge in England and later in Montpellier, France, where he died in 1836.

Private life

Dantas Pereira married Maria Eugénia da Cunha on June 24, 1823. She was the only daughter of the physician and chemist José Martins da Cunha Pessoa (1745–1822) and his wife Antónia Maria Rosa Barroso.[6] The couple had two daughters and two sons:

  • Maria Francisca da Cunha Dantas Pereira de Andrade, married José de Sousa e Vasconcelos Carneiro Baracho, military officer who served under the Duke of Terceira in the Portuguese Civil War.
  • Mariana Augusta da Cunha Dantas Pereira

See also

Works

  • Ephemerides nauticas, ou Diario astronomico para o anno 1798 (1796–1802)
  • Curso dos estudos para uso do commercio e da fazenda (1798)
  • Reflexões sobre certas somações dos termos das séries aritméticas aplicadas às soluções de diversas questões algébricas (1799)
  • Memoria relativa ao calculo dos eclipses, das estrellas, sol, e mais planetas, pela lua, acompanhada da demonstração e pratica do calculo de longitude segundo o methodo do M. de Bordá (1799)
  • Memoria sobre os Instrumentos de reflexão (1799)
  • Reflexões sobre Certas Somações Sucessivas dos Termos das Series Arithmeticas, Aplicadas às Soluções de Diversas Questões Algébricas (1799)
  • Memoria sobre hum projecto de pasigraphia, composta e dedicada ao Serenissimo Senhor Infante D. Pedro Carlos (1800)
  • Reducção das distancias lunares para a determinação das longitudes de Bordo (1807)
  • Escritos marítimos (1816)
  • Systema de signaes para a communicação dos navios entre si, e com a terra (1817)
  • Memorias para a História da Regeneração Portuguesa em 1820 (1823; under the pen name Lusitano Filantropo)[7]
  • Diversões metricas e dramaticas (1824)
  • Noções de legislação naval portugueza até o anno 1820 (1824–1831)[lower-alpha 2]
  • Memoria sobre o problema das longitudes (1826)
  • Memorias a bem da restauração da marinha en Portugal (1826–1827)
  • Memoria sobre os principios do calculo superior e sobre algumas das suas applicações (1827)
  • Memoria sobre a nomenclatura, ou linguagem matematica, menos bem tratada pelo habilissimo autor do Ensaio de Psicologia impresso em Paris no ano 1826 (1829)
  • Memoria sobre bloqueio e prezas (1831)
  • Elogio do Padre Theodoro de Almeida, por José Maria Dantas Pereira (1831)
  • Modelo de um Dicionario de Algibeira Poligloto e Passigrafico (1835)

Notes

Footnotes

  1. ↑ This post had been vacant for five years due to the death of the Count of São Vicente, its first commander.
  2. ↑ This book brings together all the naval legislation up to 1832, drawn up in accordance with the Naval Ordinances.

Citations

  1. ↑ Pereira, Esteves; Guilherme Rodrigues (1907). Portugal: Dicionário Histórico, Corográfico, Biográfico, Bibliográfico, Heráldico, Numismático, e Artístico, Vol. 3. D-K. Lisboa: João Romano Torres, pp. 16–18.
  2. ↑ Ribeiro, José Silvestre (1874). Historia dos Estabelecimentos Cientificos, Literários e Artísticos de Portugal, nos Sucessivos Reinados da Monarquia, Vol. 4. Lisboa: Tipografia da Academia Real da Ciencias, p. 243.
  3. ↑ Duarte, Antônio Leal; Jaime Carvalho e Silva & João Filipe Queiró (2005). "Some Notes on the History of Mathematics in Portugal." In: Victor J. Katz, ed., Using History to Teach Mathematics: An International Perspective. Washington, DC: Mathematical Association of America, p. 237.
  4. ↑ Teixeira, Francisco Gomes (1934). História das Matemáticas em Portugal. Lisboa: Academia das Ciências de Lisboa.
  5. ↑ Horner, William George (1819). "A New Method of Solving Numerical Equations of All Orders, by Continuous Approximation," Phil. Trans. R. Soc., Vol. CIX, pp. 308–35.
  6. ↑ Gonçalves, Artur (1933). Torrejanos Ilustres em Letras, Ciências, Armas, Religião, etc. Tôrres Novas: Câmara Municipal.
  7. ↑ Fonseca, Martinho Augusto da (1896). Subsidios para um Dicionario de Pseudonimos. Lisboa: Tipografia da Academia Real da Ciencias, p. 56.

References

  • Anon. (1800). "Dantas Pereira on Pasigraphy," The Monthly Review, Vol. XXXIII, pp. 326–28.
  • Curado, José Manuel (1986). "A Utopia Linguística de Dantas Pereira: da Escriptura Pasigraphica à Impossível Língua Perfeita", Diacrítica, No. 11, pp. 409–97.
  • Silva, Inocêncio Francisco da (1860). Dicionário Bibliográfico Portugues, Vol. 5. Lisboa: Imprensa Nacional, pp. 29–33.
  • Woodhouse, Luis Inácio (1924). "O método de Horner e um trabalho português esquecido (1794)," Jornal de Sciencias Mathematicas, Físicas e Naturais, Tomo No. 24 (Tomo 5, 3ª Série, No. 94). Outubro de 1924 a Janeiro de 1927, pp. 53–68.
  • Woodhouse, Luis Inácio (1925). "A Matemática em Portugal no Principio do Século XIX," Separata das Actas do Congresso Luso-Espanhol para o Progresso das Sciencias, Asociación Española para el Progreso de las Ciencias. Congreso de Coimbra. Madrid, pp. 81–101.

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