Giuseppe Veronese (7 May 1854 – 17 July 1917) was an Italian
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 ...
. He was born in
Chioggia
Chioggia (; , ; ) is a coastal town and (municipality) of the Metropolitan City of Venice in the Veneto region of northern Italy.
Geography
The town is located on a small island at the southern entrance to the Venetian Lagoon about sou ...
, near
Venice
Venice ( ; ; , formerly ) is a city in northeastern Italy and the capital of the Veneto Regions of Italy, region. It is built on a group of 118 islands that are separated by expanses of open water and by canals; portions of the city are li ...
.
Education
Veronese earned his
laurea
In Italy, the ''laurea'' is the main post-secondary academic degree. The name originally referred literally to the laurel wreath, since ancient times a sign of honor and now worn by Italian students right after their official graduation ceremo ...
in mathematics from the Istituto Tecnico di Venezia in 1872.
Work
Although Veronese's work was severely criticised as unsound by
Peano
Giuseppe Peano (; ; 27 August 1858 – 20 April 1932) was an Italian mathematician and glottologist. The author of over 200 books and papers, he was a founder of mathematical logic and set theory, to which he contributed much notation. The stan ...
, he is now recognised as having priority on many ideas that have since become parts of
transfinite number
In mathematics, transfinite numbers or infinite numbers are numbers that are " infinite" in the sense that they are larger than all finite numbers. These include the transfinite cardinals, which are cardinal numbers used to quantify the size of i ...
s and
model theory
In mathematical logic, model theory is the study of the relationship between theory (mathematical logic), formal theories (a collection of Sentence (mathematical logic), sentences in a formal language expressing statements about a Structure (mat ...
, and as one of the respected authorities of the time, his work served to focus Peano and others on the need for greater rigor.
He is particularly noted for his hypothesis of relative continuity which was the foundation for his development of the first non-
Archimedean linear
In mathematics, the term ''linear'' is used in two distinct senses for two different properties:
* linearity of a '' function'' (or '' mapping'');
* linearity of a '' polynomial''.
An example of a linear function is the function defined by f(x) ...
continuum.
Veronese produced several significant monographs. The most famous appeared in 1891, ''Fondamenti di geometria a più dimensioni e a più specie di unità rettilinee esposti in forma elementare'', normally referred to as ''Fondamenti di geometria'' to distinguish it from Veronese' other works also styled ''Fondamenti''. It was this work that was most severely criticised by both Peano and
Cantor
A cantor or chanter is a person who leads people in singing or sometimes in prayer. Cantor as a profession generally refers to those leading a Jewish congregation, although it also applies to the lead singer or choir director in Christian contexts. ...
, however
Levi-Civita Levi-Civita may also refer to:
* Tullio Levi-Civita
Tullio Levi-Civita, (; ; 29 March 1873 – 29 December 1941) was an Italian mathematician, most famous for his work on absolute differential calculus ( tensor calculus) and its applications to ...
described it as ''masterful'' and
Hilbert
David Hilbert (; ; 23 January 1862 – 14 February 1943) was a German mathematician and philosophy of mathematics, philosopher of mathematics and one of the most influential mathematicians of his time.
Hilbert discovered and developed a broad ...
as ''profound''.
See also
*
Veronese surface
References
* Philip Ehrlich (ed) ''Real Numbers, Generalisations of the Reals, and Theories of Continua'', 1994.
*
Paola Cantu', ''Giuseppe Veronese e i fondamenti della geometria''
iuseppe Veronese and the Foundations of Geometry Milano, Unicopli, "Biblioteca di cultura filosofica, 10", 1999, 270 pp. .
* Philip Ehrlich: The rise of non-Archimedean mathematics and the roots of a misconception. I. The emergence of non-Archimedean systems of magnitudes. Archive for History of Exact Sciences 60 (2006), no. 1, 1–121.
External links
*
Fondamenti di geometria full text in Italian, as HTML and as image files.
full text in Google-English translation.
*Grundzüge der Geometrie von mehreren Dimensionen und mehreren Arten gradliniger Einheiten in elementarer Form entwickelt, 1894, German translation.
of Veronese' work.
attributed to Veronese.
by P. Cantù
1854 births
1917 deaths
People from Chioggia
Algebraic geometers
Italian algebraic geometers
20th-century Italian mathematicians
19th-century Italian mathematicians
Italian historians of mathematics
Academic staff of the University of Padua
{{Italy-mathematician-stub