Francesco Severi

Francesco Severi ( born April 13, 1879 in Arezzo, † December 8, 1961 in Rome) was an Italian mathematician who worked mainly in the field of algebraic geometry.

Severi initially studied engineering, then mathematics at the University of Turin in Corrado Segre, where he had incidentally make money as a tutor, because he lost his father at age nine and was penniless. He received his doctorate in 1900 with a thesis on the enumerative calculus of algebraic geometry by Hermann Schubert. He was then an assistant to Enrico D' Ovidio in Turin, Federigo Enriques in Bologna and Eugenio Bertini in Pisa. In 1904 he became a professor in Parma and the following year in Padua. During the First World War he served in the artillery. From 1922 he taught at the University La Sapienza, which he was Rector from 1922 to 1925. In 1929, he approached more and more the fascists and joined the ( whose member he was since 1910) founded the Italian Academy of these as a counter founding the Accademia de Lincei. In 1939 he founded the Institute of Advanced Mathematics in Rome.

Severi applies not only to Guido Castelnuovo and Federigo Enriques as the "third pillar " of the Italian school of algebraic geometry. In 1906 he proved his theorem on the existence of linearly independent bases of algebraic curves on algebraic surfaces.

In addition to the mathematics Severi was also a bank director, farmer and dean of the faculty of engineering in Padua. He was known for his pugnacious temperament. One of his students was Oscar Zariski.

In 1907 he won the Prix Bordin of the Paris Academy. In 1932 he gave a plenary lecture at the International Congress of Mathematicians in Zurich (La théorie générale des fonctions de plusieurs variables analytiques et la géométrie algébrique ).

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