Of all the Popes who have headed the Catholic church over the centuries, only one has been a mathematician. Gerbert of Aurillac (c. 950–1003) was Europe’s leading mathematician before taking over as Pope Sylvester II, starting in 997.
In an article in the November College Mathematics Journal, Leigh Atkinson of the University of North Carolina at Asheville notes that Gerbert received practically no instruction in mathematics when he went to school at a monastery close to Aurillac, a village in south-central France.
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