Nicholas Mercator
Nicholas Mercator was a German mathematician and music theorist. He is known largely for his far-reaching mathematical achievements outside the world of musical tuning, but he played a very large role in the ‘prehistory’ of regular temperament theory, laying many of its foundational concepts.
He was one of the first people in the world to discuss the concept of 53edo. He discovered Mercator's comma, a comma which later resulted in the Mercator family of temperaments. He also played a major role in the discovery of the Holdrian comma.
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