Famous Italian Mathematicians

An Italian astronomer, engineer, and physicist, Galileo Galilei is widely regarded as the father of observational astronomy, the father of the scientific method, the father of modern physics, and the father of modern science. He is credited with popularizing the telescope, which changed the course of history.

Joseph Louis Lagrange was an Italian mathematician and astronomer who made significant contributions to the fields of number theory, analysis, and both classical and celestial mechanics. He served as the director of mathematics at the Prussian Academy of Sciences in Berlin for over 20 years. He later moved to France and became a member of the French Academy of Sciences. 

Giordano Bruno was an Italian philosopher, friar, mathematician, cosmological theorist, poet, and Hermetic occultist. Best remembered for his cosmological theories, Bruno insisted that the universe could have no center as it is infinite. In 2004, Herbert Steffen founded the Giordano Bruno Foundation in Bruno's honor.

Luca Pacioli was an Italian Franciscan friar and mathematician. He worked closely with Leonardo da Vinci and produced works, such as Divina proportione, a book on mathematics. Luca Pacioli was an early contributor to the field which came to be known as accounting. Pacioli is widely regarded as The Father of Accounting and Bookkeeping.  

Evangelista Torricelli, a student of Galileo, later made a name for himself as a physicist and a mathematician with his invention of the barometer. He also laid down the Torricelli’s theorem and discovered the Torricellian vacuum. The torr, a unit of pressure, bears his name.

Italian polymath Gerolamo Cardano is best known for his iconic work Ars magna, or The Great Art, which contributed immensely to the field of algebra. Throughout his illustrious life, he had been a physician, a math lecturer, and an astrologer. He was also the first to describe typhus fever clinically.

While he had been an Armani Junior model at 6, Pietro Boselli later earned a mechanical engineering degree, completed his PhD, and taught math. After a student posted a photo of him on Facebook and it went viral, Boselli became a sensation, gaining fame as the world's hottest math teacher.

Italian mathematician Maria Gaetana Agnesi, daughter of an affluent silk trader, was well-versed in a number of languages as a child. Most of her work was regarding algebra, calculus, and the Witch of Agnesi. She was also the first female academic to write a math book and to teach math.

Paolo Uccello was a 15th-century Florentine painter and mathematician. He worked in the Late Gothic tradition and had a style best described as idiosyncratic. As a young man, he was apprenticed to the famous sculptor Lorenzo Ghiberti, with whom he collaborated on his later works. His paintings representing the battle of San Romano are considered his best. 

Nicholas of Cusa was a German mathematician, astronomer, jurist, theologian, and philosopher. One of the first supporters of Renaissance humanism in Germany, Nicholas of Cusa made significant political and spiritual contributions in European history. He is remembered for his efforts to reform the universal and Roman Church.

Remembered as the founder of symbolic logic, Giuseppe Peano laid down the symbols of union and intersection of sets. He also worked on geometric calculus and taught at institutes such as the University of Turin. His works are written in a simplified version of Latin. He was knighted by Italy.

Former Italian president and prime minister Carlo Azeglio Ciampi had a major role in introducing Italy to the euro. He had been the governor of the Bank of Italy for 14 years and had held several portfolios, including the ministry of treasury. He was also a World War II veteran.

Niccolò Fontana Tartaglia was the first to apply math to the science of ballistics. During the French invasion of Brescia, his jaw was sliced by a sword, causing him a speech difficulty, and thus gaining him the nickname Tartaglia, or "Stammerer." His Nova Scientia remains a significant work on mechanics.

Gregorio Ricci-Curbastro pioneered the study of absolute differential calculus, or Ricci calculus, which later came to be known as tensor analysis. His studies were later used by Albert Einstein in his discovery of the theory of relativity, which is why the Ricci tensor is also known as the Einstein tensor.

While he matriculated in math and taught the subject later, Giovanni Alfonso Borelli also made pioneering discoveries as a physicist and physiologist. With works such as De Motu Animalium, he revolutionized the field of biomechanics, explaining muscular movements with the help of statics and dynamics.

Italian Theatine priest, astronomer and mathematician Giuseppe Piazzi discovered and identified the first asteroid Ceres at Palermo Astronomical Observatory that he established in Palermo, Sicily. He first demonstrated the large proper motion of the binary star system 61 Cygni in the constellation Cygnus. He also supervised compilation of the Palermo Catalogue of stars and completion of the Capodimonte (Naples) Observatory.

Gian-Carlo Rota went down in history as the first and the only professor of applied mathematics and philosophy at MIT. His illustrious scientific career revolved around research on subjects such as combinatorics, probability, and functional analysis. He had also led the American Mathematical Society as its vice president.

Vito Volterra is remembered for his work on calculus and functional analysis. Born into a poor family in Ancona, he used his math skills to join the University of Pisa. He later taught as mechanics professor. He was also the first to suggest the use of helium in airships.

Seventeenth-century Italian mathematician Bonaventura Cavalieri is largely remembered as someone who set the tone for integral calculus with his work on geometry. While teaching math at the University of Bologna, he developed his iconic method of indivisibles. He also introduced Italy to logarithms through his book Directorium Generale Uranometricum.

Fields Medal-winning Italian mathematician Enrico Bombieri is known for his work on number theory and the distribution of primes. Currently a professor at Princeton, Bombieri was 16 when he wrote his first math paper and 22 when he earned a math degree. He is also an avid painter.

Benedetto Castelli, a Benedictine priest and a student of Galileo, later became a math professor at the University of Pisa. His On the Measurement of Water Currents is considered a fundamental work in hydraulics. He was the first to work on the principle of the barometer and sustained vacuum.

Italian mathematics lecturer and award-winning former gay pornographic film actor Carlo Masi worked in the gay pornography industry with Colt Studio Group for six years before joining theatres. He later earned a B.SC degree in mathematics and a Ph.D. in Mathematical Models for Engineering, Electromagnetism and Nanosciences from the Sapienza University of Rome where he also worked as a lecturer.   

Paolo Ruffini was at the same time a mathematician and a physician. He was the first to claim that the general quintic equation had no algebraic solution. Ruffini was briefly banned from teaching when he refused to submit to the new republic following the rise of Napoleon.

Starting his career as servant of Italian polymath Gerolamo Cardano, Lodovico de Ferrari proved his brilliance and earned tutelage of Cardano and became a noted mathematician of his time. He assisted Cardano on his solutions for quadratic equations and cubic equations, and is most noted for solving the quartic equations that Cardano published in his book Ars Magna.

Eugenio Beltrami was an Italian mathematician, whose work on the differential geometry of curves and surfaces helped to establish the soundness of non-Euclidean geometry. A faculty of University of Bologna, he dealt in wide range of subjects, establishing Beltrami equation, Beltrami identity, Beltrami's theorem, Laplace–Beltrami operator, Beltrami vector field and Beltrami–Klein model, publishing several works including Opere Matematiche.

Aloysius Lilius, also known as Luigi Lilio, is best remembered as the main author of the Gregorian Calendar. Well-versed in medicine and astronomy, Lilius hailed from Calabria, Italy, though not much is known about his life. His calendar was presented to Pope Gregory XIII by his brother Antonio.

Scipione del Ferro was the first to find a technique to solve the depressed cubic equation x3 + px = q. He taught arithmetic and geometry throughout his life and also contributed to the study of fractions that had irrational denominators. Unfortunately, none of his written works exist anymore.

Noted for his contributions in the fields of topology and algebra, Italian mathematician Enrico Betti also worked in the area of theoretical physics, particularly dealing with potential theory and elasticity. He discovered Betti's theorem and is perhaps best remembered for his 1871 paper on topology that led to the eventual naming of the Betti numbers after him.

Giovanni Ceva had proposed the geometric theory, the Ceva's theorem, named after him. The Italian mathematician taught at the universities of Pisa and Mantua. Apart from geometry, he had also worked on hydraulics and mathematical economics. He was the brother of poet and mathematician Tommaso Ceva.

Italian mathematician Luigi Cremona is best remembered for his work on graphical statics. A member of the Steinerian school of geometry, he was a professor, a Royal Society member, and later, a senator of the Kingdom of Italy. He also received the Steiner Prize and the German Pour le Mérite.

Italian Jesuit mathematician and poet Tommaso Ceva worked in geometry, arithmetic and gravity. Notable works of Ceva includes Opuscula mathematica (1699), his only work in mathematics; the scientific work De natura gravium (1699); and the religious poem Jesus Puer (1690). His brother, Italian mathematician Giovanni Ceva, is noted for proving Ceva's theorem in elementary geometry.

Italian physicist, mathematician, and astronomer Paolo Frisi is best remembered for his work on hydraulics, expressed through his books such as A Treatise on Rivers and Torrents. His interpretation of the works of eminent scientists such as Galileo and Newton, too, are considered immensely valuable to the scientific community.

A highly intellectual scholar and a reputed epistemologist, Giulio Giorello graduated from the University of Milan with philosophy and mathematics. He later taught physics and natural science in a number of reputed universities across Italy before being appointed as professor of philosophy of science at his alma mater. A prolific writer, he published around twenty major works in his lifetime.

Domenico Guglielmini is regarded as the pioneer of the Italian school of hydraulics, though he initially worked on astronomy. Apart from being a professor of hydrometry and mathematics, he was also a part-time physician, but eventually quit his research on hydraulics to focus on medicine full-time.