Emilio Artom (9 November 1888 – 11 December 1952) was a Jewish

Italian Italian(s) may refer to: * Anything of, from, or related to the people of Italy over the centuries ** Italians, a Romance ethnic group related to or simply a citizen of the Italian Republic or Italian Kingdom ** Italian language, a Romance languag ...

mathematician A mathematician is someone who uses an extensive knowledge of mathematics in their work, typically to solve mathematical problems. Mathematicians are concerned with numbers, data, quantity, mathematical structure, structure, space, Mathematica ...

who was born and died in

Torino Turin ( , ; ; , then ) is a city and an important business and cultural centre in northern Italy. It is the capital city of Piedmont and of the Metropolitan City of Turin, and was the first Italian capital from 1861 to 1865. The city is main ...

. For two years he was assistant to

Federigo Enriques Abramo Giulio Umberto 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 algebrai ...

Bologna Bologna ( , , ; ; ) is the capital and largest city of the Emilia-Romagna region in northern Italy. It is the List of cities in Italy, seventh most populous city in Italy, with about 400,000 inhabitants and 150 different nationalities. Its M ...

and subsequently became a high-school teacher.

Biography

He was born in a Jewish family of modest economic conditions. Immediately after graduation he stayed two years at the

University of Bologna The University of Bologna (, abbreviated Unibo) is a Public university, public research university in Bologna, Italy. Teaching began around 1088, with the university becoming organised as guilds of students () by the late 12th century. It is the ...

as an assistant of

, but he renounced in 1911 convinced that, as he had produced little, it was better to start teaching. In 1911 he won the Chair at school and became a professor at the Teaching Institute of Aosta. In 1914 he married Amalia Artom (also a mathematician) and they had two children: historian and

partisan Partisan(s) or The Partisan(s) may refer to: Military * Partisan (military), paramilitary forces engaged behind the front line ** Francs-tireurs et partisans, communist-led French anti-fascist resistance against Nazi Germany during WWII ** Ital ...

Emanuele (1915–1944) and Ennio (1920–1940), who died doing mountain trekking. In 1920 he taught at a technical institute in

Turin Turin ( , ; ; , then ) is a city and an important business and cultural centre in northern Italy. It is the capital city of Piedmont and of the Metropolitan City of Turin, and was the first Italian capital from 1861 to 1865. The city is main ...

and subsequently at the Scientific High School "Galileo Ferraris", also in Turin. Immediately after

World War I World War I or the First World War (28 July 1914 – 11 November 1918), also known as the Great War, was a World war, global conflict between two coalitions: the Allies of World War I, Allies (or Entente) and the Central Powers. Fighting to ...

, Artom produced the scientific publications which would gain him the 1930 Mathesis award for a history of

conic sections A conic section, conic or a quadratic curve is a curve obtained from a Conical surface, cone's surface intersecting a plane (mathematics), plane. The three types of conic section are the hyperbola, the parabola, and the ellipse; the circle is ...

in elementary mathematics. Almost resolved to a more sustained effort in scientific research, he could not however obtain a

professorship Professor (commonly abbreviated as Prof.) is an academic rank at universities and other post-secondary education and research institutions in most countries. Literally, ''professor'' derives from Latin as a 'person who professes'. Professors ...

due to political reasons, as he was not willing to join the

National Fascist Party The National Fascist Party (, PNF) was a political party in Italy, created by Benito Mussolini as the political expression of Italian fascism and as a reorganisation of the previous Italian Fasces of Combat. The party ruled the Kingdom of It ...

. Artom hence committed himself to linguistic studies. The tragic events of the family and the entire Italian Jewish community after the 1938

Italian Racial Laws The Italian racial laws, otherwise referred to as the Racial Laws (), were a series of laws promulgated by the government of Benito Mussolini in Fascist Italy from 1938 to 1944 in order to enforce racial discrimination and segregation in the King ...

kept him permanently away from the study of mathematics. He died in Turin in 1952.

Sources

PRISTEM Biography
1888 births 1952 deaths 19th-century Italian mathematicians 20th-century Italian mathematicians 20th-century Italian Jews Scientists from Turin {{Italy-mathematician-stub