Beppo Levi

Infobox Writer
name = Beppo Levi


birthname =
birthdate = birth date|1875|5|14|mf=y
birthplace = Turin, Italy
deathdate = death date and age|1961|8|28|1875|5|14|mf=y
deathplace = Rosario, Argentina

Beppo Levi was born on May 14, 1875 in Turin, Italy. He published a several high-level academic articles and books on Mathematics, Physics, History, Philosophy and Dydactics. Levi was also a member of the Bologne Academy of Sciences and Dei Lincei.

Early Years

Beppo Levi studied at the University of Turin, and obtained his Ph.D. in mathematics at age 21. Three months later, Levi was appointed Assistant Professor, also at the University Of Turin, where shortly thereafter became a full time Scholar. In 1901, Levi was appointed Professor at the University of Piacenza; in 1906, at the University of Cagliari; in 1910, at the University of Parma. Finally, in 1928, at the University of Bologne. The following years bore the signature Mussolini's power and rising antisemitism in Italy. Levi was soon expelled from all held positions at the university of Bologne and emigrated to Argentina like many other European Jews at the time.

Life in Argentina

The choice of Argentina was in response to an invitation by Engineer Cortés Plá, dean at the Facultad de Ciencias Matemáticas, Físico-Químicas y Naturales at the Universidad del Litoral (UNR)in the city of Rosario. Cortés Plá, invited Levi to come to Rosario to head the recently created Instituto de Matemática where Levi did most of his work from 1939 until his death in and August 1961.

Amongst his contributions to mathematics: studies on singularities and algebraic surfaces, the Lebesgue integration and mathematical measure. Levi introduced the so-called "Beppo-Levi's native spaces" which arise when using polyharmonic splines to interpolate in many space dimensions are embedded in Hölder-Zygmund spaces. The Lebesgue's "monotone convergence theorem" the first of several theorems which allow us to “exchange integration and limits”, is also known as "Beppo Levi's Theorem". In advance, he proposed, within the set theory, what would be later known as the "Zermelo set theory".

While living in Rosario Levi joined a group of mathematicians like Luis Santaló, Simón Rubinstein, Juan Olguín, Enrique Ferrari, Fernando and Enrique Gaspar, Mario Castagnino and Edmundo Rofman. In 1940 Levi founded "Mathematicae Notae", the first ever mathematical journal in Argentina. Beppo Levi died on August 28, 1961 in Rosario, Argentina and he's buried in the Jewish cemetery.

His likeness

Professor Levi always dressed in black. With his white goatee and silver-framed, thick reading glasses, pettit frame and a prominent hump one could easily spot him between students and helpers surrounding the little man after class. On the ride home Beppo Levi would seat and read from scientific magazines that he pulled out of a large black-leather briefcase he carried everywhere. The briefcase seemed even larger compared to the Professor minute figure. Beppo Levi, extremely short-sighted, would bring the papers very close to his glasses and read while his feet hanged and bounced from the seat like those of a child.

Sources

* http://mathforum.org/kb/thread.jspa?forumID=339&threadID=&messageID=#
* http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beppo_Levi
* N. Schappacher and R. Schoof. [http://www.mat.uniroma2.it/~schoof/beppo.pdf Beppo Levi and the arithmetic of elliptic curves] , The Mathematical Intelligencer, 57–69.