Matteo Ricci

Matteo Ricci (1552–1610) was an Italian Jesuit and a founder of the Jesuit China mission. At the Roman College he studied mathematics and astronomy under Christopher Clavius. He sailed from Lisbon in 1578 and reached Goa that year.

He reached Macau in 1582, mastered Chinese, and settled at Zhaoqing with Michele Ruggieri in 1583, where he made his first Chinese world map in 1584. Moving north, he entered Beijing in 1601 and served the Wanli Emperor as astronomer and cartographer, publishing the enlarged Kunyu Wanguo Quantu in 1602.

He stressed parallels between Catholicism and Confucian teaching and worked with Xu Guangqi to translate Euclid's Elements into Chinese. He died in Beijing in 1610.