Guido Castelnuovo (14 August 1865, Venice – 27 April 1952, Rome) was an Italian Jewish mathematician. His father, Enrico Castelnuovo, was a novelist and campaigner for the unification of Italy. Castelnuovo is mainly known for his contributions to the field of geometry. August 14 is the 226th day of the year in the Gregorian Calendar (227th in leap years), with 139 days remaining. ... 1865 is a common year starting on Sunday. ... Venice is known for its waterways and gondolas Gondola. ... April 27 is the 117th day of the year (118th in leap years) in the Gregorian Calendar, with 248 days remaining. ... 1952 - Wikipedia /**/ @import /skins/monobook/IE50Fixes. ... Location within Italy The Roman Colosseum Rome (Italian and Latin: Roma) is the capital city of Italy and of its Latium region. ... The Italian Republic or Italy (Italian: Repubblica Italiana or Italia) is a country in southern Europe. ... The word Jew ( Hebrew: יהודי) is used in a wide number of ways, but generally refers to a follower of the Jewish faith, a child of a Jewish mother, or someone of Jewish descent with a connection to Jewish culture or ethnicity and often a combination of these attributes. ... A mathematician is a person whose area of study and research is mathematics. ... A novel is an extended work of written, narrative, prose fiction, usually in story form; the writer of a novel is a novelist. ... Geometry (from the Greek words Ge = earth and metro = measure) is the branch of mathematics first introduced by Theaetetus dealing with spatial relationships. ...

Life

Early life

After attending a grammar school at Foscarini in Venice, he went to Padua where he graduated in 1886. At the University of Padua he was taught by Giuseppe Veronese. After his graduation, he sent one of his papers to Corrado Segre, whose replies he found remarkably helpful. It marked the beginning of a long period of collaboration. Location within Italy Tronco Maestro Riviera: a pedestrian walk along a section of the inland waterway or naviglio interno of Padua The city of Padua (Lat. ... 1886 is a common year starting on Friday (click on link to calendar) Events January 18 _ Modern field hockey is born with the formation of The Hockey Association in England. ... Gymnasivm Patavinum: The University shown in a 1654 woodcut The University of Padua (Università degli Studi di Padova, UNIPD) is one of the most well-renowned universities in Italy. ...

Career

Castelnuovo spent one year in Rome to research advanced geometry. After that he was appointed as an assistant of Enrico D'Ovidio at the University of Turin, where he was strongly influenced by Corrado Segre. Here he worked with Alexander von Brill and Max Noether. In 1891 he moved back to Rome to work at the chair of Analytic and Projective Geometry. Here he was a colleague of Luigi Cremona, his former teacher, and took over his job when the latter died in 1903. Location within Italy The Roman Colosseum Rome (Italian and Latin: Roma) is the capital city of Italy and of its Latium region. ... The University of Turin (Università degli Studi di Torino, UNITO) is the university of Turin in the Piedmont region of north-western Italy. ... 1891 was a common year starting on Thursday (see link for calendar). ... 1903 has the latest occurring solstices and equinoxes for 400 years, because the Gregorian calendar hasnt had a leap year for seven years or a century leap year since 1600. ...

Retirement and World War II

He retired from teaching in 1935. It was a period of great political difficulty in Italy. In 1925 Mussolini had risen to power and in 1938 a large number of anti-semitic laws were declared, which excluded him, like other Jews, from public work. With the rise of Nazism, he was forced into hiding. However, during World War II, he organised and taught secret courses for Jewish students — the latter were not allowed to attend university either. 1935 was a common year starting on Tuesday (link will take you to calendar). ... Events January-May January 3 - Benito Mussolini announces he is taking dictatorial powers over Italy. ... Benito Mussolini created a fascist state through the use of propaganda, total control of the media and disassembly of the working democratic government. ... 1938 was a common year starting on Saturday (link will take you to calendar). ... The Eternal Jew: 1937 German poster Anti-Semitism (alternatively spelled antisemitism) is hostility towards or prejudice against Jews (not, in common usage, Semites in general — see the Scope section below). ... Law (a loanword from Danish- Norwegian lov), in politics and jurisprudence, is a set of rules or norms of conduct which mandate, proscribe or permit specified relationships among people and organizations, provide methods for ensuring the impartial treatment of such people, and provide punishments for those who do not follow... The Nazi party used a right-facing swastika as their symbol and the red and black colors were said to represent Blut und Boden (blood and soil). ... Mushroom cloud from the nuclear explosion over Nagasaki rising 18 km into the air. ...

Final years and death

After the liberation of Rome, Castelnuovo was appointed as a special commissioner of the Consiglio Nazionale delle Ricerche in June 1944. He was given the task to repair the damage done to Italian scientific institutions by the twenty years of Mussolini's rule. He became president of the Accademia dei Lincei until his death and was elected a member of the Académie des Sciences in Paris. On 5 December 1949, he became a senator of the Italian Republic. The Italian National Research Council (CNR) is a public organization of great relevance in the field of scientific and technological research of the Country whose original institution goes back to year 1923. ... 1944 was a leap year starting on Saturday (link will take you to calendar). ... This article or section should include material from Lincean Academy The Accademia dei Lincei (Academy of the Lynxes, also known as The Lincean Academy), founded in Rome 1603, is the worlds oldest scientific society. ... The French Academy of Sciences (Académie des sciences) is a learned society, founded in 1666 by Louis XIV at the suggestion of Jean_Baptiste Colbert, to encourage and protect the spirit of French scientific research. ... December 5 is the 339th day (340th in leap years) of the year in the Gregorian calendar. ... 1949 is a common year starting on Saturday. ... A senate is a deliberative body, often the upper house or chamber of a legislature. ...

Castelnuovo died at the age of 86 on 27 April 1952 in Rome. April 27 is the 117th day of the year (118th in leap years) in the Gregorian Calendar, with 248 days remaining. ... 1952 - Wikipedia /**/ @import /skins/monobook/IE50Fixes. ...

Work

In Turin Castelnuovo was strongly influenced by Corrado Segre. In this period he published high-quality work on algebraic curves. He also made a major step in reinterpreting the work on linear series by Alexander von Brill and Max Noether (Brill-Noether theory). Location Region Piedmont Province Torino Area   – Total   – Water 130 km² (50 mi²) ##.# km² (#.# mi²) #.##% Population   – Total (2002)   – Density 857,433 6,596/km² Time zone CET: UTC+1 Latitude Longitude   45°04N 7°40E (##.#######, -##.#######)1. ... Algebra is a branch of mathematics which may be roughly characterized as a generalization and extension of arithmetic, in which symbols are employed to denote operations, and letters to represent number and quantity; it also refers to a particular kind of abstract algebra structure, the algebra over a field. ... In mathematics, the concept of a curve tries to capture our intuitive idea of a geometrical one-dimensional and continuous object. ... In mathematics, the Brill-Noether theory in algebraic geometry is the theory of special divisors on generic algebraic curves. ...

Castelnuovo had his own theory about how Mathematics should be taught. His courses were divided into two: first a general overview of mathematics, and then a in-depth theory of algebraic curves. He has said about this approach:

… the reason for the division is that on the one hand it is necessary to have general culture, on the other hand it is necessary to have deep knowledge of a particular field.

He also taught courses on algebraic functions and abelian integrals. Here, he treated, among other things, Riemann surfaces, non-Euclidean geometry, differential geometry, interpolation and approximation, and probability theory. He found the latter the most interesting, because as a relatively recent one, the relationship between the deduction and the empirical contribution was more clear. In 1919, he published Calcolo della probabilità about this subject. He also wrote a book on calculus: Le origini del calcolo infinitesimale nell'era moderna. In mathematics, an algebraic function of indeterminates X1, X2, ..., Xn, is a function F that satisfies some non-trivial equation P(F, X1, X2, ..., Xn) = 0, with P a polynomial in n + 1 variables over a given field K. That is, F is an implicit function that solves an algebraic... In mathematics, an abelian integral in Riemann surface theory is a function related to the indefinite integral of a differential of the first kind. ... In mathematics, particularly in complex analysis, a Riemann surface is a one-dimensional complex manifold. ... The term non-Euclidean geometry (also spelled: non-Euclidian geometry) describes both hyperbolic and elliptic geometry, which are contrasted with Euclidean geometry. ... In mathematics, differential topology is the field dealing with differentiable functions on differentiable manifolds. ... This article is about interpolation in mathematics. ... An approximation is an inexact representation of something that is still close enough to be useful. ... Probability theory is the mathematical study of probability. ... 1919 was a common year starting on Wednesday (see link for calendar). ... For other uses of the term calculus see calculus (disambiguation) Calculus is a central branch of mathematics, developed from algebra and geometry, and built on two major complementary ideas. ...

Castelnuovo's most important work was done in the field of algebraic geometry. In the early 1890s he published three famous papers, including one with the first use of the characteristic linear series of a family of curves. The Castelnuovo-Severi inequality was co-named after him. He collaborated with Federigo Enriques on the theory of surfaces. This collaboration started in 1892 when Enriques was only a student, but grew further over the next 20 years: they submitted their work to the Royal Prize in Mathematics by the Accademia dei Lincei in 1902, but were not given the prize because they had sent it jointly instead of under one name. Both received the prize in later years. Algebraic geometry is a branch of mathematics which, as the name suggests, combines abstract algebra, especially commutative algebra, with geometry. ... The 1890s were sometimes referred to as the Gay Nineties, under the then-current usage of the word gay which referred simply to merriment and frivolity, with no connotation of homosexuality as in current-day usage. ... Federigo Enriques (5 January 1871 –14 June 1946) was an Italian mathematician, now known principally as the first to give a classification of algebraic surfaces in birational geometry, and other contributions in algebraic geometry. ... 1892 was a leap year starting on Friday (see link for calendar). ... This article or section should include material from Lincean Academy The Accademia dei Lincei (Academy of the Lynxes, also known as The Lincean Academy), founded in Rome 1603, is the worlds oldest scientific society. ... Events January-April January 28 - The Carnegie Institution is founded in Washington, DC with a $10 million gift from Andrew Carnegie. ...

Another theorem named partly after Castelnuovo is the Kronecker-Castelnuovo theorem (1894): If the sections of an irreducible algebraic surface, having at most isolated singular points, with a general tangent plane turn out to be reducible curves, then surface is either ruled surface and in fact a scroll, or the Veronese surface. Kronecker never published it but stated it in a lecture. Castelnuovo proved it. In total, Castelnuovo published over 100 articles, books and memoirs. In mathematics, an algebraic surface is an algebraic variety of dimension two. ... In mathematics, a singular point of an algebraic variety V is a point P that is special (so, singular), in the geometric sense that V is not locally flat there. ... In geometry, a surface is ruled if through every point of there is a straight line that lies on . ...

Sources and further reading

• " Guido Castelnuovo (http://www-groups.dcs.st-and.ac.uk/~history/Mathematicians/Castelnuovo.html)." University of St. Andrews on Guido Castelnuovo. Accessed on March 3, 2005.
• 17 references for further reading (http://www-groups.dcs.st-and.ac.uk/~history/References/Castelnuovo.html) Some in English, most in Italian.