Father of Accounting

Luca Pacioli

Sandra Jameson

Thesis
Accounting

Luca Pacioli

Who is Luca Pacioli and why is he important in the world of accounting?
With hard work and dedication you can succeed with many things in life. Luca Pacioli was often called the father of accounting. He was a poor boy that most saw as having an unpromising future. Yet he worked hard and studied harder doing something that he loved and even now he is well known and very famous for everything he has done. We even still to this day use a lot of his writings in the educational fields of mathematics. Luca Pacioli even has several things that have been named after him since he died.

Luca Pacioli kept many journals and ledgers in his life. However through the years some information has been lost about Luca Pacioli, for example the year he was born. Out of all the documentaries and other papers that I found on Luca Pacioli they all state that he was probably born around the year 1445. He was born in a small town called Sansepulcro, Tuscany. His family was poor, and his future seemed very unpromising. However starting at a young age he started working towards becoming great.
Pacioli joined a Franciscan monastery and became an apprentice to a local businessman. However he soon abandoned his apprenticeship to become a mathematics scholar. He soon thereafter befriended an artist Piero Della Francesca. Francesca and Pacioli journeyed to the Appenines where Francesca gave Pacioli access to the library of Frederico, the Count of Urbino. With access to over four thousand books Pacioli was able to further his knowledge of mathematics. Francesca also introduced Pacioli to a man name Leon Baptist Alberti.
Leon Alberti took Pacioli to Venice, where it was set up for Pacioli to tutor the three sons of Antonio Reimpose, a rich merchant. At the age twenty-five Pacioli wrote his first manuscript (a book about algebra) and dedicated it to the Reimpose boys. Alberti was also the one that introduced Pacioli to Pope Paul II. Paul often talked to Pacioli about becoming a monk. So in 1472, when Alberti died Pacioli took his monk vows of Franciscan Minor.
In 1475, Pacioli became a teacher at the University of Perugia. He stayed with the University for six years and within that time he became the first lecturer to hold a chair in math at the University. He often taught about the importance of theory and putting it to practical use. This was actually what started the emphasis on application of theory that made him unique among his peers. While at the University, Pacioli also wrote his second manuscript and dedicated it to the “Youth of Perugia”. From 1481 to 1486, Pacioli traveled a bit till he was called back to the University. By this time he was referring to himself as a “Magister,” which by our terms is a professor.
In 1494 Pacioli published a book called Summa de arithmetica, geometria, proportioni et proportionalita also known as (The Collected Knowledge of Arithmetic, Geometry, Proportion and Proportionality). When he wrote this book it was to bring attention to the poor state of mathematics teaching in his time. With this book Pacioli became the first person to describe double-entry accounting (the Venetian method) and was when he started to become famous. With Pacioli’s new fame, it insured him a place in history as “The Father of Accounting”. While Friar Luca is often called the "Father of Accounting," he did not invent the system. Instead, he simply described a method used by merchants in Venice during the Italian Renaissance period.
Numerous tiny details of bookkeeping techniques, set by Pacioli were followed in texts and the profession for at least the next four centuries, as accounting historian Henry Rand Hatfield put it, "persisting like buttons on our coat sleeves, long after their significance had disappeared." Perhaps the best proof that Pacioli's work was considered potentially significant even at the time of publication was the very fact that it was printed on November 10, 1494. Guttenberg had just a quarter-century earlier invented metal type, and it was still an extremely expensive proposition to print a book.
With Pacioli’s fame from his manuscript he was also invited to Milan to teach. In Milan one of his first students (pupils) was Leonardo da Vinci. During the seven years they spent together, they helped each other to create two masterpieces that would withstand the test of time. During this time was when Pacioli wrote his second most important manuscript “Of Divine Proportions” with Da Vinci doing the illustrations. Pacioli then taught Da Vinci perspective and proportionality, which in turn allowed Da Vinci to create one of his well-known master pieces (a mural on the north wall of the Santa Maria Garcia Dominican cloister). Da Vinci’s mural became the most famous painting of the fifteenth century, known as “The Last Supper”.
In 1509 Pacioli gave a lecture on “Proportion and Proportionality” a lecture that emphasized the relationship of proportion to religion, medicine, law, architecture, grammar, printing, sculpture, music and all the liberal arts. Then in 1510, Pacioli was appointed director of the Franciscan monastery in Sansepulcro, though most of his fellow monks did not approve of the decision. In 1514, Pope Leo III called Pacioli to the papacy in Rome to become a teacher there. The scholars are unsure about what happened to Pacioli afterwards, but they are fairly certain that he never made it to Rome. It is believed that Pacioli probably died in 1517, in the monastery in Sansepulcro.
Accounting practitioners in public accounting, industry, and not-for-profit organizations, as well as investors, lending institutions, business firms, and all other users for financial information are indebted to Luca Pacioli for his monumental role in the development of accounting. With all of this as an example, it shows us that like Pacioli, if we study hard and work hard, you never really know what can happen. You might even become famous.