"Many years ago I published in the Formulaire de Mathématique of Professor Peano an account of the first discovery of mathematical induction as due to the Italian Maurolycus. But this paper seems to have had only a small diffusion. ...the most original of his works is the treatise on arithmetic "Arithmeticorum libri duo" written in the year 1557 and printed in Venice in the year 1575 in the collection "D. Francisci Maurolyci Opuscula mathematica." In the Prolegomena to this work he points out that neither in Euclid nor in any other Greek or Latin writer (among them he enumerates Iamblichus, Nicomachus, Boetius) is there, to his knowledge, a treatment of the polygonal and polyhedral numbers, and he reproaches Jordanus for having been content with a useless repetition of what was written by Euclid. "Nos igitur [he says] conabimur ea, quae super hisce numerariis formis nobis occurrunt, exponere: multa interim faciliori via demonstrantes, et ab aliis authoribus aut neglecta, aut non animadversa supplentes." This new and easy way is nothing else than the principle of mathematical induction. This principle is used at the beginning of the work only in the demonstration of very simple propositions, but in the course of the treatise is applied to the more complicated theorems in a systematic way. ...Was Pascal unaware of the book of Maurolycus? In his Traité du triangle arithmétique printed perhaps in the year 1657, he never mentions Maurolycus, notwithstanding that, in my opinion, this treatise is only an application of the method discovered by Maurolycus. But Pascal, shortly after, being engaged in the polemic concerning the cycloid, in the well known letter, "Lettre de Dettonville à Carcavi" had to demonstrate a proposition concerning the triangular and pyramidal numbers. He says then:"Cela Est Aisé Par Maurolic."It is strange to point out that not even the name of Maurolycus has been included in the Table analytique of the old edition of the works of Pascal, and more strange that the editors of the new edition of the "Oeuvres" of Pascal in a very incomplete historical note before the reimpression of the Traité du triangle arithmétique never mention the name of one of the greatest European mathematicians of the sixteenth century."