Guido Castelnuovo

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Guido Castelnuovo, ca.1930

Guido Castelnuovo (born August 14, 1865 in Venice , † April 27, 1952 in Rome ) was an Italian mathematician who mainly worked in the field of algebraic geometry .

The son of a well-known novelist studied mathematics with Giuseppe Veronese in Padua , where he graduated in 1886. In 1888 he went to the University of Turin as Enrico D'Ovidio's assistant , with whose student Corrado Segre he already corresponded. In 1891 he became professor of geometry in Rome and thus a colleague of Luigi Cremona , who was mainly active as a politician. In 1935 he retired. During the Second World War, like many Roman Jews, he was forced to go into hiding and held courses for Jewish students who were also in hiding. After the war he became president of the Accademia dei Lincei , of which he had been a corresponding member since 1901 and a full member ( socio nazionale ) since 1918 , and from which he had been expelled as a Jew in 1938 as a result of the Italian racial laws , and in 1949 a senator for life . In 1923 he was elected a member of the Göttingen Academy of Sciences and the Leopoldina . In 1929 he became a corresponding member of the Académie des sciences . Castelnuovo's main field of work was algebraic geometry. During his time in Turin, he gave the theory of linear flocks by Brill and Max Noether (whose obituary he wrote with Francesco Severi and Federigo Enriques in the Mathematische Annalen Vol. 93 of 1925) a projective-geometric interpretation. With F. Enriques he was a leader in the classification program of algebraic surfaces in the Italian school .

G. Castelnuovo, ca.1885

He was also interested in probability theory, on which he wrote a two-volume work in 1918 (and a French book published by Herman in Paris in 1937), and in questions of mathematics didactics. He also wrote a book on the origins of calculus in 1938.

In 1928 he gave a plenary lecture at the International Congress of Mathematicians in Bologna ( La geometria algebrica e la scuola italiana ).

He was married to Federigo Enriques' sister, Elbina. His daughter Emma Castelnuovo (1913–2014) was a well-known mathematics teacher in Italy.

literature

  • Eugenio Togliatti:  Castelnuovo, Guido. In: Alberto M. Ghisalberti (Ed.): Dizionario Biografico degli Italiani (DBI). Volume 21:  Caruso – Castelnuovo. Istituto della Enciclopedia Italiana, Rome 1978.
  • Jeremy Gray: The classification of algebraic surfaces by Castelnuovo and Enriques , Mathematical Intelligencer 1999, No. 1
  • Emma Castelnuovo: L'università clandestina a Roma , Bollettino Unione Matematica Italiana, Ser. 8, Vol. 4a, 2001, p. 63 (his daughter)
  • this: Enriques e Castelnuovo , Boll. U.N. Mat. Italiana, Ser. 7, Vol. 11, 1997, p. 227

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Holger Krahnke: The members of the Academy of Sciences in Göttingen 1751-2001 (= Treatises of the Academy of Sciences in Göttingen, Philological-Historical Class. Volume 3, Vol. 246 = Treatises of the Academy of Sciences in Göttingen, Mathematical-Physical Class. Episode 3, vol. 50). Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, Göttingen 2001, ISBN 3-525-82516-1 , p. 56.
  2. ^ List of members since 1666: Letter C. Académie des sciences, accessed on October 27, 2019 (French).
personal data
SURNAME Castelnuovo, Guido
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Italian mathematician
DATE OF BIRTH August 14, 1865
PLACE OF BIRTH Venice
DATE OF DEATH April 27, 1952
Place of death Rome