Graciano Ricalde Gamboa

Son of Don Ambrosio Ricalde Moguel and Isidra Gamboa and studied at Hocabá until 1885, the year he received a scholarship to the Normal School for teachers of the State in the city of Mérida.

For the purpose of continuing his education, he studied civil engineering at the Institute for Literature of the state of Yucatan, under the wise leadership of Manuel Cepeda Sales.

At that time, facing the danger of a collapse of one of the towers of the Cathedral of Yucatan, the authorities asked professor Sales Cepeda to assist in determining the weight of the church bell that had been ignored.

He assembled a large library of over 5000 titles and was a collaborator of the French academic journal L'Intermédiaire des Mathématiciens, published in Paris in the early twentieth century.

In 1923 he precisely calculated the solar eclipse that year and became part of the Mexican Geodetic Commission who observed and studied in Champotón in the state of Campeche.

He was invited to work as a professor in several foreign schools, which he never accepted, preferring to remain in his homeland dedicating himself to his studies and to organize accounting systems of industrial enterprises seeking professional services The municipal library of Hoctún was called Graciano Ricalde Gamboa after the "favorite son of the village".

Among Ricalde's greatest accomplishments is that of his contribution to the resolution of the general equation of 5th-degree grade by elliptic functions, a feat that is analyzed and evaluated in the second part of this biography in Enciclopedia Yucanense IV, 1944.

(Lemmermeyer includes Ricalde in a list of people who solved special cases of Pell's equation, citing the 1901 issue of L'Intermédiaire des Mathématiciens).

Graciano would be the first to correctly prove by precise calculation that neither the arrival of Halley's Comet or its tail would hit the earth extinguishing life.

But his greatest accomplishment is undoubtedly the resolution of the general equation of 5th-degree grade by elliptic functions, a feat that is analyzed and evaluated in the second part of this biography.

The National Academy of Sciences, Antonio Alzaate organized a mathematical exposition of the merits of Graciano Ricalde during the evening in the Palacio de Bellas Artes of Mexico City.

The band played and speakers including Dr. Ruben Moreno Ricalde spoke that evening as chronicled and published in the Daily News.