- Bonaventura Francesco Cavalieri was an Italian mathematician born in 1598 who developed the method of indivisibles, a precursor to integral calculus.
- His method treated areas as composed of lines and volumes as composed of planar areas, allowing him to solve problems involving areas, volumes, and centers of mass.
- Though crude, his method provided practical techniques for computing areas and volumes and influenced later mathematicians like Kepler and Galileo.