Luca Bartolomes Pacioli is widely regarded as the developer of the double-entry accounting system, which revolutionized the way people kept track of money and is still the dominant accounting method in use today. He wrote extensively on the subject and helped to make double entry the standard accounting practice throughout the world.

Pacioli was born in Sansepolcro, Italy in about 1445. For some reason not clear today, the boy grew up with the nearby Befolci family. It is said that the great artist Piero de la Francesca fostered and encouraged Pacioli's love of mathematics from an early age, perhaps giving him part of his formal education. As a young man, Pacioli served as an apprentice to a wealthy Venetian merchant, also living with him and tutoring his three sons while learning mathematics at a nearby church school.

After writing his first work on arithmetic in 1470, Pacioli stayed briefly in...