Marin Mersenne lived in a 700 year old 1200 year old kingdom region of France Francesco Maurolico Lived on an island outside of and 300 years before the nation of Italy Don t really see the comparison If you making some kind of semantic claim based on how many times you can spot him called Italian you should see WP OR I don t see it in a strict Google book search vast majority of sources have him as Born in Sicily to a Greek family If you want to make a case for modern nationalities being linked to historical people then you are arguing in the wrong place you should take it up at Wikipedia talk Manual of Style Biographies Greek origin Greek ethnicity