Francisco Cavalcanti Pontes de Miranda

Francisco Cavalcanti Pontes de Miranda (São Luís de Quitunde, 23 april 1892 – Rio de Janeiro, 22 december 1979) was a Brazilian polymath, scholar, jurist and mathematician. His main work, the Tratado de Direito Privado (Treatise on Private Law), was fundamental to Brazil's legal thought and system.  He was interested in natural sciences, and was one of the first people in Latin America to study Einstein's Theory of Relativity, making several criticisms of it. His main influences were Tobias Barretto, Clovis Bevilaqua, Rudolf von Ihering and Friedrich Carl von Savigny.

Born to a traditional rural family in the Northeast of Brazil, he showed great intelligence as a child, reading french correctly at the age of seven. When he was sixteen, his father offered him a scholarship to study at the University of Oxford, but he chose to attend the Recife School of Law of the University of Pernambuco, where he graduated at the age of nineteen. Around this time, he was already well-known as an author for his essays on law, sociology and psychology, which were praised by the famous jurist Ruy Barbosa. At twenty-two years old, he started writing his Treatise on Private Law, a large collection of around sixty books covering civil law, tax law, commercial law and philosophy of law. He spent the rest of his life working as a diplomat and professor. 

 References 
Category:1892 births
Category:1979 deaths
Category: Men

Category:Brazilian Roman Catholics
Category:Brazilian lawyers
Category:Mathematicians