Giovanni's father Giulio Fagnano held high office in Sinigaglia. He was appointed gonfaloniere in 1723 when Giovanni was eight years old. Gonfaloniere literally means "standard bearer" and it was a title of high civic magistrates in the medieval Italian city-states such as Sinigaglia.
Giovanni was one of many children in his family but the only one to follow his father's interest in mathematics. He entered the Church, being ordained priest, then appointed as canon of the cathedral in Sinigaglia in 1752. In 1755 Fagnano was appointed as archpriest, a very high rank to achieve.
Fagnano continued his father's work on the triangle and wrote an unpublished treatise on the topic. One theorem on the triangle which he discovered is worth quoting. He proved that given any triangle T, then the triangle whose vertices are the bases of the altitudes of T has these altitudes as the bisectors of its angles.
Fagnano also considered integration computing the integrals of
Some of Fagnano's publications appear in the Nova acta eruditorum Ⓣ in 1774. However, he never achieved the international standing of his father although he did publish some work outside Italy.
Article by: J J O'Connor and E F Robertson