Tullio Levi-Civita

Tullio Levi -Civita ( born March 29, 1873 in Padua, † 29 December 1941 ) was an Italian mathematician.

He was a pupil of Gregorio Ricci - Curbastro and in 1898 became professor of mechanics in Padua. In 1918 he went to Rome. In 1938 he was excluded from the fascist regime of anti -Semitism of his profession.

Levi -Civita invented the covariant derivative, made with his book calcolo differential assoluto the tensor analysis a wider specialist audience, and thus laid the mathematical foundation for Albert Einstein's General Theory of Relativity, which he used in later years in Italy. In this connection, the Levi -Civita tensor is named after him. Also, the de Sitter space, he introduced independently by Willem de Sitter. He also dealt extensively with the three-body problem. In 1931 he wrote a book about ordinary and partial differential equations. He also invented the Levi -Civita body.

The Royal Society awarded him the Sylvester Medal in 1922 and took him in 1930 as a Foreign Member on.

See also: Levi- Civita connection

Writings

• The absolute differential calculus and its applications in geometry and physics, Springer 1928 ( original in Italian Calcolo differential assoluto )
• Questions of classical and relativistic mechanics: 4 lectures held in Spain in January 1921 Springer 1924, Reprint 1973