Fibonacci - his life, his work and his statue
Fibonacci statue by Giovanni Paganucci
Foto: © Copyright 2025, Gauthier Cerf.
Leonardo often accompanied his father on trips to North Africa and was trained in the Hindu-Arabic numbering system, which was far superior to the Roman numbering system of the time because it allowed much faster calculations. This was of course a great advantage for traders.
Fibonacci’s involvement with Arabic mathematics made him one of the great mathematicians of the Middle Ages. He brought the Hindu-Arabic numbering system to Europe with his book Liber Abaci, published in 1202. In it, he also calculated the reproduction of pairs of rabbits whose population grows in the Fibonacci sequence.
In the 1220s, Fibonacci wrote three further mathematical works that are still known today: Practica Geometriae, Liber Quadratorum and Flos.
Unfortunately, little is known about Fibonacci beyond these works and after his death. It was not until the 18th and 19th centuries that his works were rediscovered and a complete edition was printed.
The return to Fibonacci’s significant achievements led to the government in Florence commissioning a statue in his honour. The commission was awarded to the Florentine sculptor Giovanni Paganucci, who completed the statue in 1863.
Unfortunately, there are no known images of Fibonacci during his lifetime. The statue and other images of Fibonacci are therefore fiction.
The Fibonacci statue stood then and still stands today in Pisa’s historic cemetery in the impressive Campo Santo building. Alongside the Duomo di Pisa, the bell tower of the cathedral (Il Campanile, known to most as the Leaning Tower of Pisa) and the Baptistery (Il Battistero), this is one of the four marvellous historical buildings in Piazza del Miracoli in Pisa.
Page from the book Liber Abaci by Fibonacci
Photo: Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=720501
Construction work on the Campanile began in 1172, around the year Fibonacci was born. However, Fibonacci did not live to see its completion, as it took around 200 years due to frequent interruptions in construction caused by wars and a shortage of money. However, he must have seen the leaning of the tower as a boy, as the tower began to tilt as early as 1178 due to poor design and inadequate foundations on unstable ground.
Photo: © Copyright 2025, Gauthier Cerf.
The Piazza dei Miracoli in Pisa with the Battistero in the foreground, the Campo Santo on the left and the Duomo di Pisa on the right. The imposing 11-metre bronze statue ‘Arcturus e Sun – I Cavalli Volante’ (the flying horses) by the Pisan artist Antonio Signorini can be seen at the very front.
Photo: © Copyright 2025, Gauthier Cerf.
The inner courtyard of the Campo Santo, where the statue of Fibonacci stands, among others.
