Tullio Levi-Civita

Source: Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.
This article is about the mathematician. For the mathematical symbol, see Levi-Civita symbol.
Tullio Levi-Civita
Tullio Levi-Civita
Born(1873-03-29)29 March 1873
Padua, Italy
Died29 December 1941(1941-12-29) (aged 68)
Rome, Italy
Alma materUniversity of Padua
Known for
AwardsSylvester Medal (1922)
FRS (1930)
Scientific career
FieldsMathematics
InstitutionsUniversity of Rome
Doctoral advisorGregorio Ricci-Curbastro
Doctoral students

Tullio Levi-Civita,

hydrodynamics.[3][4]

Biography

Tullio Levi-Civita

Born into an Italian

University of Rome
; in another two years he was appointed to the Chair of Mechanics there.

In 1900 he and Ricci-Curbastro published the theory of tensors in Méthodes de calcul différentiel absolu et leurs applications,[6] which Albert Einstein used as a resource to master the tensor calculus, a critical tool in the development of the theory of general relativity. In 1917 he introduced the notion of parallel transport[7][8] in Riemannian geometry, motivated by the will to simplify the computation of the curvature of a Riemannian manifold.[9] Levi-Civita's series of papers on the problem of a static gravitational field were also discussed in his 1915–1917 correspondence with Einstein. The correspondence was initiated by Levi-Civita, as he found mathematical errors in Einstein's use of tensor calculus to explain the theory of relativity. Levi-Civita methodically kept all of Einstein's replies to him; and even though Einstein had not kept Levi-Civita's, the entire correspondence could be re-constructed from Levi-Civita's archive. It is evident from this that, after numerous letters, the two men had grown to respect each other. In one of the letters, regarding Levi-Civita's new work, Einstein wrote "I admire the elegance of your method of computation; it must be nice to ride through these fields upon the horse of true mathematics while the like of us have to make our way laboriously on foot".[10] In 1933 Levi-Civita contributed to Paul Dirac's equations in quantum mechanics as well.[11]

His textbook on tensor calculus, The Absolute Differential Calculus (originally a set of lecture notes in Italian co-authored with Ricci-Curbastro), remains one of the standard texts almost a century after its first publication, with several translations available.

In 1936, receiving an invitation from Einstein, Levi-Civita traveled to

1938 race laws
enacted by the Italian Fascist government deprived Levi-Civita of his professorship and of his membership of all scientific societies. Isolated from the scientific world, he died in his apartment in Rome in 1941.

Among his

Gheorghe Vrânceanu
.

Later on, when asked what he liked best about Italy, Einstein said "spaghetti and Levi-Civita".[12]

Other studies and honors

Analytical dynamics was another aspect of Levi-Civita's studies: many of his articles examine the

Cauchy–Kowalevski theorem, on which he wrote a book in 1931. In 1933, he contributed to work on the Dirac equation. He developed the Levi-Civita field, a system of numbers that includes infinitesimal
quantities.

Levi-Civita was elected an international honorary member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1917.[13] The Royal Society awarded him the Sylvester Medal in 1922 and elected him as a foreign member in 1930. He became an honorary member of the London Mathematical Society, of the Royal Society of Edinburgh, and of the Edinburgh Mathematical Society, following his participation in their colloquium in 1930 at the University of St Andrews. He was also a member of the Accademia dei Lincei, the Pontifical Academy of Sciences, and the American Philosophical Society.[14]

Works

All his mathematical works, except for the monographs, treatises and textbooks, were posthumously gathered in the six volumes of his "Collected works", in a revised typographical form amending both typographical errors and author's oversights.

Articles

  • S2CID 120009332
    .
  • Levi-Civita, Tullio (1904), "Sulla integrazione della equazione di Hamilton-Jacobi per separazione di variabili" [On the integration of the Hamilton-Jacobi equation by separation of variables] (PDF),
    S2CID 123144759
    .
  • Levi-Civita, Tullio (1917), "Nozione di parallelismo in una varietà qualunque e conseguente specificazione geometrica della curvatura riemanniana" [Notion of parallelism in any variety and consequent geometric specification of the Riemannian curvature],
    S2CID 122088291
    .

Books

  • Tullio Levi-Civita and Ugo Amaldi Lezioni di meccanica razionale (Bologna: N. Zanichelli, 1923)
  • Tullio Levi-Civita Questioni di meccanica classica e relativistica (Bologna, N. Zanichelli, 1924)
  • Tullio Levi-Civita Lezioni di calcolo differenziale assoluto (Roma: Alberto Stock Editore 1925)
    • The Absolute Differential Calculus (London & Glasgow, Blackie & Son 1927) (edited by Enrico Persico, trans. by Marjorie Long)[15]
  • Tullio Levi-Civita and Enrico Persico Fondamenti di meccanica relativistica (Bologna : N. Zanichelli, 1928)
  • Tullio Levi-Civita Caratteristiche dei sistemi differenziali e propagazione ondosa (Bologna, N. Zanichelli 1931)
  • Tullio Levi-Civita and Ugo Amaldi Nozioni di balistica esterna (Bologna: N. Zanichelli, 1935)
  • Tullio Levi Problème des N Corps en relativité générale (Gauthier-Villars, Paris, 1950, Mémorial des sciences mathématiques
    ISSN 0025-9187
    )
  • Levi-Civita, Tullio (1954), Opere Matematiche. Memorie e Note [Collected mathematical works. Memoirs and notes] (PDF) (in French and Italian), vol. primo (1893−1900), Pubblicate a cura dell'
    Accademia Nazionale dei Lincei, Roma: Zanichelli Editore
    , pp. XXX, 564.
  • Levi-Civita, Tullio (1956), Opere Matematiche. Memorie e Note [Collected mathematical works. Memoirs and notes] (PDF) (in French and Italian), vol. secondo (1901−1907), Pubblicate a cura dell'
    Accademia Nazionale dei Lincei
    , Roma: Zanichelli Editore, pp. VI, 636.
  • Levi-Civita, Tullio (1957), Opere Matematiche. Memorie e Note [Collected mathematical works. Memoirs and notes] (PDF) (in French and Italian), vol. terzo (1908−1916), Pubblicate a cura dell'
    Accademia Nazionale dei Lincei
    , Roma: Zanichelli Editore, pp. VI, 600    .
  • Levi-Civita, Tullio (1960), Opere Matematiche. Memorie e Note [Collected mathematical works. Memoirs and notes] (PDF) (in French and Italian), vol. quarto (1917−1928), Pubblicate a cura dell'
    Accademia Nazionale dei Lincei
    , Roma: Zanichelli Editore, pp. VI, 608    .
  • Levi-Civita, Tullio (1970), Opere Matematiche. Memorie e Note [Collected mathematical works. Memoirs and notes] (in French and Italian), vol. quinto (1929−1937), Pubblicate a cura dell'
    Accademia Nazionale dei Lincei
    , Roma: Zanichelli Editore, pp. VI, 670    .
  • Levi-Civita, Tullio (1970), Opere Matematiche. Memorie e Note [Collected mathematical works. Memoirs and notes] (in French and Italian), vol. sesto (1938−1941), Pubblicate a cura dell'
    Accademia Nazionale dei Lincei
    , Roma: Zanichelli Editore, pp. VI, 502    .
  • Levi-Civita, Tullio (2007) [1895], Pamphlets, mathematics, University of Michigan, retrieved 14 January 2017. A collection of some of his published papers (in their original typographical form), probably an unordered uncorrected collection of offprints.

See also

Notes

  1. ^ Tullio Levi-Civita. Nndb.com. Retrieved on 2011-08-14.
  2. ^ (Levi-Civita 1904)
  3. ^ O'Connor, John J.; Robertson, Edmund F., "Tullio Levi-Civita", MacTutor History of Mathematics Archive, University of St Andrews
  4. ^ Tullio Levi-Civita at the Mathematics Genealogy Project
  5. ISBN 978-1470428464
    .
  6. ^ (Ricci & Levi-Civita 1900).
  7. ^ (Levi-Civita 1917)
  8. arXiv:2210.13239 [gr-qc
    ].
  9. arXiv:1608.04986
    .
  10. ISBN 9780691048413
    .
  11. ^ C Cattani and M De Maria, Geniality and rigor: the Einstein – Levi-Civita correspondence (1915–1917), Riv. Stor. Sci. (2) 4 (1) (1996), 1–22; as cited in MacTutor archive.
  12. ISBN 0-8218-0465-0
    .
  13. ^ "Tullio Levi-Civita". American Academy of Arts & Sciences. Retrieved 2023-05-04.
  14. ^ "APS Member History". search.amphilsoc.org. Retrieved 2023-05-04.
  15. doi:10.1090/s0002-9904-1928-04644-x
    .

References

Biographical references

  • "Professor T. Levi-Civita, Member of Vatican Academy," The Jewish Chronicle (UK), February 6, 1942.

General references

Scientific references

Publications dedicated to his memory

External links
Retrieved from "https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Tullio_Levi-Civita&oldid=1215284960"