Tullio Levi-Civita ( Italian: Tullio Levi-Civita ; March 29, 1873 , Padua - December 29, 1941 , Rome ) is an Italian mathematician of Jewish origin, famous mainly for his work in the field of tensor calculus and its applications to the theory of relativity , but also made significant contribution to other branches of mathematics. He was a student of Ricci , the inventor of tensor calculus. The main works include fundamental articles on pure and applied mathematics, celestial mechanics (especially on the problem of three or more bodies ) and hydrodynamics .
| Tullio Levi-Civita | |
|---|---|
 Tullio Levi-Civita (1930) | |
| Date of Birth | March 29, 1873 |
| Place of Birth | Padova , Italy |
| Date of death | December 29, 1941 (68 years old) |
| Place of death | Rome , Italy |
| A country | |
| Scientific field | Mechanics |
| Place of work | |
| Alma mater | |
| supervisor | Ricci Courbastro |
| Famous students | Octav Onicu Gheorghe Wrenchanu |
| Awards and prizes | [d] |
Content
Biography
Tullio Levi-Civita was the son of Giacomo Levi-Civita , a well-known lawyer and then an Italian senator . In 1892, he graduated from the University of Padua , Department of Mathematics, where he was a student of Gregorio Ricci-Courbastro [1] . In 1894, Levi-Civita received a teacher’s diploma and after that began working at the Faculty of Science in Padua (of Science teacher's college).
In 1898, he began working at the Department of Rational Mechanics of the University of Padua, where he met his future wife, Libera Trevisani, who was one of his students. They got married in 1914 . In 1918, Tullio was invited to the Department of Higher Analysis of the University of Rome , where he subsequently worked; in addition, for two more years he taught at the department of mechanics [2] .
In 1900, Levi-Civita and Ricci-Courbastro published one of the most famous works on the theory of tensor calculus: Méthodes de calcul differential absolu et leures applications , which Albert Einstein and Marcel Grossman used as the mathematical basis for the general theory of relativity . A series of articles by Levi-Civita on the problem of a static gravitational field was actively discussed in his correspondence with Einstein in 1915-1917 . Correspondence was started by Levi-Civita himself, since he found mathematical errors in Einstein's use of tensor calculus in the theory of relativity. He punctually retained all of Einstein's answers, so that although his letters to Einstein were not preserved, the full contents of the correspondence can be restored from the Levi-Civita archive. According to the surviving letters, their authors were of high opinion about each other. In one of the letters regarding the new work of Levi-Civita, Einstein wrote: “I admire the elegance of your method of calculation; how pleasant it must be to ride through these fields on a stallion of pure mathematics, while the rest must tirelessly rearrange their legs. ”
A textbook of tensor calculus written by Levi-Civita, The Absolute Differential Calculus (originally a record of lectures delivered in Italian in collaboration with Ricci-Courbastro), remains one of the relevant texts for exploring the subject more than 100 years after its first publication. This book has been translated into many languages, including Russian. He also wrote one of the first books on the motion of bodies in the general theory of relativity [3] . In 1933, Levi-Civita made a significant contribution to the development of the theory of the Dirac equation [2] .
In 1935 he visited TsAGI with a scientific visit.
In 1938, due to the racist laws of the fascist government of Italy, Levi-Civita lost his professorship, was expelled from all scientific organizations in Italy and isolated from the world scientific community. Soon, in 1941 , he died lonely in his apartment in Rome.
Among his students were Octavus Onnicu and George Vrenchanu .
According to the memoirs of D. Ya. Stroyka , when, after the death of Levi-Civita, Einstein was asked what he likes best in Italy, he replied: “spaghetti and Levi-Civita” [4] .
Memory
In 1970, the International Astronomical Union named Tullio Levi-Civita a crater on the far side of the moon .
See also
- Levy-Civita Connectivity
- Symbol of Levi Civita
Notes
- ↑ Tullio Levi-Civita (Eng.) In the project “ Mathematical Genealogy ”
- ↑ 1 2 John J. O'Connor and Edmund F. Robertson . Levy-Civita, Tullio (eng.) - biography in the MacTutor archive.
- ↑ Levi-Civita T. Le problème des n corps en relativité générale. - Paris, Gauthier-Villars, 1950. Memorial des Sciences Mathématiques, fasc. 116.
- ↑ A Century of Mathematical Meetings / Ed. Bettye Anne Case. - Providence, RI: AMS , 1996 .-- S. 14. - xii + 332 s. - ISBN 0-8218-0465-0 .
Literature
- 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.
- Amir D. Aczel, God's Equation , MJF Books, New York, 1999.
- Angelo Loinger, Einstein, Levi-Civita, and Bianchi relations, arXiv: physics / 0702244v1 [physics.gen-ph]
- Hermann R. (ed.), Ricci and Levi-Civita's tensor analysis papers , (1975) Math Sci Press, Brookline
- Tulio Levi-Civita e Ugo Amaldi, Lezioni di meccanica razionale (2 volumes), (1930), Nicola Zanichelli editore, Bologna
- Russian translation: T. Levy-Civita and W. Amaldi, Course in Theoretical Mechanics (2 volumes), (1935), Moscow-Leningrad
Links
- Scienceworld biography
- Another short biography
- Profile of Tullio Levi-Civita on the official website of the RAS