José Mariano Oriñuela y su proyecto para el establecimiento de una Academia de Matemáticas en Querétaro

Abstract

The founding of the Academia de San Carlos was an important step in channeling the teaching of the arts and sciences in New Spain towards a formal educational system in physical spaces providing environments where teachers could expound and impart theory and practice on a regular basis. The initiative to found an Academy of Mathematics in the city of Querétaro, which received the Viceroy's blessing in 1793, came as a rewarded for the unstinting efforts and consummate knowledge of José Mariano Oriñuela, a resident of the city whose life spanned the eighteenth-nineteenth century divide. Oriñuela was a surveyor whose professional activity involved the drawing up and valuation of rural and urban properties and mines, applying the mathematics and geometry learnt from the works of Bails, Tosca and Fray Lorenzo and the architectural treatises of Vitruvius and Palladio.