Simone Stratigo

Simone Stratigo
A portrait of Simone Stratigo.
Born	Symeon Filippos Stratigos 1733 Zara, Dalmatia, Republic of Venice
Died	1824 Milan, Italy
Occupation	Mathematics, Nautical science
Ethnicity	Greek

Simone Stratigo (Greek: Συμεών Φίλιππος Στρατηγός, Symeon Filippos Stratigos; Italian: Simone Filippo Stratico; 1733–1824) was an Italian Greek mathematician and a nautical science expert who studied and lived in Padua and Pavia in 18th-century Italy.

Simone Stratigo was born in 1733 as Symeon Filippos Stratigos to a family of Greek origin in Zara (modern Zadar in Croatia), part of Venetian Dalmatia at the time. His family were originally from Candia, Crete and had migrated to Dalmatia due to the Ottoman conquest of Crete in 1669. While still young, Simone and his brother studied in the University of Padua under the discipline of their uncle Antonio Stratico (Antonios Stratigos), who was an educated man, especially in things Greek, and was director of the Cottunio Greek college at the time. Stratigo graduated in medicine from the University of Padua, where at the age of twenty-five years he became a professor.

He was a member of the delegation who traveled from Venice to England in 1761 to congratulate the new King George III, he remained in the country a few years to study and became a member of various academies including the Royal Society of London. At that time he was greatly impressed by the size and economic strength of the British navy. He soon moved back in Padua, where he replaced Giovanni Poleni the chair of Mathematics and Navigation. In this capacity, he studied extensively the water regime of the Republic of Venice, collaborating with various interventions in hydraulics. He participated in cleaning up the valleys of Verona and the regulation of the Brenta and Bacchiglione. In 1786, he joined as an ordinary member of the Accademia dei XL.