Furio Honsell (born 20 August 1958) is an Italian

professor Professor (commonly abbreviated as Prof.) is an Academy, academic rank at university, universities and other tertiary education, post-secondary education and research institutions in most countries. Literally, ''professor'' derives from Latin ...

and

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 ...

, former mayor of

Udine Udine ( ; ; ; ; ) is a city and (municipality) in northeastern Italy, in the middle of the Friuli-Venezia Giulia region, between the Adriatic Sea and the Carnic Alps. It is the capital of the Province of Udine, Regional decentralization entity ...

Biography

Honsell received a mathematics degree at the

University of Pisa The University of Pisa (, UniPi) is a public university, public research university in Pisa, Italy. Founded in 1343, it is one of the oldest universities in Europe. Together with Scuola Normale Superiore di Pisa and Sant'Anna School of Advanced S ...

in 1980, with a subsequent diploma in mathematics at the Normale of Pisa in 1983.

Academic career

Honsell has held research and tenured positions at the computer science department of the

University of Turin The University of Turin (Italian language, Italian: ''Università degli Studi di Torino'', UNITO) is a public university, public research university in the city of Turin, in the Piedmont (Italy), Piedmont region of Italy. It is one of the List ...

, the

University of Edinburgh The University of Edinburgh (, ; abbreviated as ''Edin.'' in Post-nominal letters, post-nominals) is a Public university, public research university based in Edinburgh, Scotland. Founded by the City of Edinburgh Council, town council under th ...

and the

University of Udine The University of Udine (Italian language, Italian ''Università degli Studi di Udine'') is a public university in the city of Udine, Italy. It was founded in 1978 as part of the reconstruction plan of Friuli after the 1976 Friuli earthquake, ear ...

. His research concerned, among other subjects,

lambda calculus In mathematical logic, the lambda calculus (also written as ''λ''-calculus) is a formal system for expressing computability, computation based on function Abstraction (computer science), abstraction and function application, application using var ...

and language semantics. In 1990 he was appointed full professor of computer science at the

, where he directed the computing center until 1992, the department of mathematics and computer science from 1992 to 1995, and was Dean of the faculty of mathematical, physical and natural sciences from 1995 to 1998. In 2001, Honsell was elected Rector of the

, an office he held until 2008, when he ran for the position of Mayor of Udine.

Political career

Mayor of Udine

In the local elections of 2008, Honsell was elected Mayor of Udine for the

centre-left coalition The centre-left coalition () is a political alliance of political parties in Italy active under several forms and names since 1995, when The Olive Tree was formed under the leadership of Romano Prodi. The centre-left coalition has ruled the c ...

, endorsed by the Democratic Party, The Left – The Rainbow and the

Italy of Values Italy of Values (, IdV) is a populist and anti-corruption political party in Italy. The party was founded in 1998 by former ''Mani pulite'' prosecutor Antonio Di Pietro, who entered politics in 1996 and finally left the party in 2014. IdV has ai ...

. He was re-elected in 2013, endorsed by the Democratic Party,

Left Ecology Freedom Left Ecology Freedom (, SEL) was a democratic socialist political party in Italy whose bulk was formed by former members of the Communist Refoundation Party. The party's leader was Nichi Vendola, a former President of Apulia. On 17 December 201 ...

and the

Federation of the Left The Federation of the Left (, FdS) was an electoral alliance of communist political parties in Italy. The coalition was the evolution of the Anticapitalist and Communist List. History In the run-up to the 2009 European Parliament election, in ...

Regional councillor

On 18 January 2018, Honsell resigned as mayor in order to stand as a candidate in the regional elections in Friuli-Venezia Giulia the following spring with ''Open - Sinistra FVG'', a list supported by Article One, in support of the

centre-left Centre-left politics is the range of left-wing political ideologies that lean closer to the political centre. Ideologies commonly associated with it include social democracy, social liberalism, progressivism, and green politics. Ideas commo ...

presidential candidate Sergio Bolzonello. Honsell is elected to the regional council and later re-elected in the following regional election. He is a candidate in the 2019 European elections with the Democratic Party list as an independent close to Article One in the North-East Italy constituency; with 28,535 preferences, he comes twelfth as he is not elected. In the general elections of 2022 he runs for a seat at the

Senate A senate is a deliberative assembly, often the upper house or chamber of a bicameral legislature. The name comes from the ancient Roman Senate (Latin: ''Senatus''), so-called as an assembly of the senior (Latin: ''senex'' meaning "the el ...

in the single-member constituency of

Friuli-Venezia Giulia Friuli-Venezia Giulia () is one of the 20 regions of Italy and one of five autonomous regions with special statute. The regional capital is Trieste on the Gulf of Trieste, a bay of the Adriatic Sea. Friuli-Venezia Giulia has an area of and a ...

by the

, obtaining 25.98% and losing the challenge against the

centre-right Centre-right politics is the set of right-wing politics, right-wing political ideologies that lean closer to the political centre. It is commonly associated with conservatism, Christian democracy, liberal conservatism, and conservative liberalis ...

candidate Luca Ciriani.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Honsell, Furio 1958 births Living people Democratic Party (Italy) politicians Article One (political party) politicians 20th-century Italian mathematicians 21st-century Italian mathematicians University of Pisa alumni Mayors of Udine Academic staff of the University of Udine Politicians from Genoa