Person: Brioschi, Francesco
FrancescoBrioschi was an Italian mathematician who contributed to the study of mathematical physics.
Mathematical Profile (Excerpt):
- Francesco studied at the University of Pavia, which is 32 km south of his home town of Milan, and an ancient institution in the mid 19th century being founded in 1361.
- Brioschi graduated from the University of Pavia in 1845 when he received a doctorate after submitting a thesis which had been directed by Antonio Bordoni.
- From 1852 to 1861 Brioschi was professor of applied mathematics at the University of Pavia.
- In 1858, together with Betti from Pisa and his own student Casorati, Brioschi visited Göttingen, Berlin and Paris.
- When they returned to Italy they began to publish Italian translations of Riemann's works and Brioschi began to lecture on these ideas.
- Casorati was not the only student that Brioschi had in Pavia, for he also advised the doctoral students Cremona (doctorate in 1853) and Beltrami (doctorate in 1856).
- In 1859 he appointed Brioschi to a committee which had as its remit the reform of secondary schools.
- From 1861 to 1862 Brioschi was secretary of the Italian Ministry of Education.
- Brioschi also continued to work more generally for improving Italian education and, from 1870 to 1882, he was on the Executive Council of the Ministry of Education.
- Brioschi studied the theory and application of determinants and published a major work Teoria dei determinanti Ⓣ(Theory of determinants) in 1854.
- Brioschi also obtained new results in the theory of transformation of elliptic and abelian functions.
- Brioschi however later went on to solve sixth degree equations using similar techniques.
- In 1888, Maschke proved that a particular sixth-degree equation could be solved by using hyperelliptic functions and Brioschi then showed that any sixth-degree algebraic equation could be reduced to Maschke's equation and therefore solved using hyperelliptic functions.
- Brioschi highly valued the significance of pure mathematics in applications and greatly influenced the direction of mathematics in Italy.
- Brioschi, however, was not one to lay the foundations of new areas of mathematics but rather one who grasped the power of new ideas he met rapidly and saw much further than others how these ideas could be used to make major advances.
Born 22 December 1824, Milan, Lombardo-Veneto (now Italy). Died 14 December 1897, Milan, Italy.
View full biography at MacTutor
Tags relevant for this person:
Architecture, Astronomy, Origin Italy
Thank you to the contributors under CC BY-SA 4.0! 
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- non-Github:
- @J-J-O'Connor
- @E-F-Robertson
References
Adapted from other CC BY-SA 4.0 Sources:
- O’Connor, John J; Robertson, Edmund F: MacTutor History of Mathematics Archive
