Vito Volterra
Vito Volterra ( May 3, 1860 in Ancona, † October 11, 1940 in Rome) was an Italian mathematician and physicist.
Volterra came from a poor family. At age 13, he already dealt with the three-body problem. He studied at the University of Pisa and a PhD on hydrodynamics.
In 1883 he became professor of mechanics in Pisa, after the death of his teacher Enrico Betti he obtained the chair of mathematical physics at Pisa, in 1892 the chair of mechanics in Turin. In 1900 he was chair of mechanics in Rome.
In 1905 he was appointed Senator of the Kingdom, where he belonged to no group. In World War I he worked for the Italian Army and was instrumental in the development of airships with. From him came the idea to use non-flammable helium instead of hydrogen as a carrier gas.
From 1922 he was active in the opposition to the fascists. When in 1931 he refused to swear allegiance to the fascist regime of Benito Mussolini, he was forced to leave the university. Because of his refusal to take the oath, he was excluded in 1935 from the Accademia Nazionale dei Lincei, to which he had belonged since 1888 as a corresponding and since 1899 as a full member. The last years of his life were spent abroad, especially in Spain and France, but returned shortly before his death in Rome.
His research focused in particular the analysis. Are known primarily his work on integral equations, a special type is named after him Volterra equation. He also worked on population dynamics in predator -prey relationships. The laws found by him, which he formulated independently by Alfred J. Lotka are, according to him Volterra Rules ( formerly: Volterra - laws) called.
In 1928 he gave a plenary lecture at the International Congress of Mathematicians (ICM ) in Bologna (La teoria dei funzionali applicata ai fenomeni ereditari; application of the theory of functionals in genetics ), as previously in 1900 on the ICM in Paris ( Betti, Brioschi, Casorati - Trois analystes italy et trois Manières d' envisager les questions d'analyze ) and in 1908 in Rome (Le matematiche in Italia nella seconda del metà secolo XIX).