Publications

Monograph

  • The Craft of Indo-Arabic Numerals: How Practical Arithmetic Shaped Commerce and Mathematics in Western Europe, 1200-1600. Monograph contracted, peer reviewed, and accepted for publication with Harvard University Press. Expected publication: spring 2026.

Peer-reviewed papers

  • Algebra in Transit in Late Medieval and Early Modern Europe, Physis (2025), 60 (1), 1-30.

  • The spread of Hindu-Arabic numerals among practitioners in Italy and England (13th-16th c.): two moments of a European innovation cycle? Datini Studies in Economic History (2023), 259-287.

  • Elaboration and diffusion of useful knowledge in the long run: the case of European practical arithmetic (13th-16th centuries), Rivista di Storia Economica (2022), 1, 57-84.

  • Figuring Out: the Spread of Hindu-Arabic Numerals in the European Tradition of Practical Mathematics (13th-16th centuries), Nuncius,(2021), 36 (1), 1-44.

  • Una scienza per la rinascita. Note su Paolo dell’Abaco e la matematica abacistica fiorentina, Rinascimento (2019), 59.

Working papers

  • (with M. Iori and A. Mina) ‘A Numerical Revolution: The Diffusion of Practical Mathematics and the Growth of Pre-Modern European Economies’, SSRN Working Paper and LEM Working Paper, 2022.

  • (with T. Morel) ‘Text and practices: situating mathematics in practical arithmetic manuals. Evidence from German and Italian cases (14th-16th c.)’, in R. Wagner and S. Babu (eds.), Normative Texts and Occupational Practices, Boston Studies in the Philosophy and History of Science, Cham: Springer. Peer reviewed and accepted: forthcoming.

  • (with S. Locatelli) ‘Dalla teoria alla prassi della matematica: libri d’abaco e pratiche di mercatura nel tardo medioevo’, Studi di Storia Medioevale e Diplomatica. Peer reviewed and accepted: forthcoming.

  • ‘The Values of Numbers: The Roots of European Algebra in Late Medieval Commercial Capitalism’.

Book Chapters

  • Un rinascimento dal basso: l’aritmetica mercantile e la sua epistemologia pratica, in Lo sguardo del lupo. Arte, matematica e filosofia nell’umanesimo del Quadrivio, Bologna: Pendragon (2024), 43-72.

Book Reviews

  • “Jessica Otis, By the numbers: numeracy, religion, and the quantitative transformation of early modern England (New Yorl: Oxford University Press)”, Historia Mathematica (2025), forthcoming.

  • “Pamela Smith, From lived experience to the written word: reconstructing practical knowledge in the early modern world (Chicago: University of Chicago Press)”, Centaurus (2023), 65 (4), 899-901.

  • “Niccolò Guicciardini (ed.), Anachronisms in the History of Mathematics (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press)”, Nuncius (2022), 37, 721-755.

  • La crisi in tre atti, la crisi in tre libri (review of The Ascent of Money, by Niall Ferguson, Money: The Unauthorised Biography by Felix Martin, and Crashed by Adam Tooze), Rivista Il Mulino (2020), 69 (2), 323-328.

  • “William Deringer, Calculated Values: Finance, Politics, and the Quantitative Age (Cambridge, Mass. & London: Harvard University Press)”, The Economic History Review (2019), 72(1), 411-412. DOI: 10.1111/ehr.12833.