Person: Scorza, Bernardino Gaetano
Gaetano Scorza was an Italian mathematician who worked in algebraic geometry.
Mathematical Profile (Excerpt):
- This presented Gaetano with great difficulties as he was growing up, and must be at least a contributory factor in the depression he suffered from as a young man.
- Scorza would turn to Pistelli when he was finding life unbearable.
- Scorza then entered the University of Pisa where he studied mathematics, taught by a collection of famous mathematicians including Eugenio Bertini, Ulisse Dini and Luigi Bianchi.
- Scorza was awarded his laurea in 1898 and he submitted for publication two papers from it, Sopra le figure polari delle curve piane del 3° ordine Ⓣ(On the polar figures of plane curves of the 3rd order) and Sopra la teoria delle figure polari delle curve piane del 4° ordine Ⓣ(On the theory of the polar figures of plane curves of the 4th order).
- After obtaining his laurea, Scorza was appointed as an assistant to Eugenio Bertini, who held the chair of analytical and projective geometry at the University of Pisa.
- Scorza spent the year in Turin assisting Corrado Segre, who held the chair of projective and descriptive geometry.
- Scorza produced some elegant papers while in Turin and broadened the areas of his research.
- At the end of the year, the assistants returned to their original positions, so in 1900 Scorza went back to Pisa as Bertini's assistant.
- It was the economist Maffeo Pantaleoni (1857-1924) who encouraged Scorza to take an interest in mathematical economics.
- Scorza wrote four articles on this topic which were published in the Giornale degli Economisti between April 1902 and February 1903.
- Most historians suggest that Pareto failed to understand fully the points that Scorza was making but eventually sided with him.
- By the end of 1906, Scorza had begun to have contacts again with Bertini, Severi and other researchers in geometry and, given his outstanding early contributions, they were all keen to persuade him to return to his study of algebraic geometry.
- Certainly both Bertini and Severi made suggestions of specific questions that would interest Scorza.
- The depression which had gripped Scorza frequently over the years began to ease around this time.
- Scorza's health improved markedly from 1906 and he was able to resume his research in algebraic geometry with a renewed vigour.
- However, Scorza was appointed to fill Pieri's chair and, from the start of the academic year 1913-14, he taught the courses that Pieri had given.
- One of the main ideas for which Scorza is known is that of Riemann matrices.
- the scientific activity of Gaetano Scorza after the year 1915 is studied.
- In the year 1916 Scorza published a valuable paper in which the concept of Riemann matrix was introduced.
- In the year 1921 Scorza published a new important paper where some problems posed in the previous paper were solved by the theory of algebras.
- Particularly, the papers of Gaetano Scorza on singular varieties and on reducible abelian integrals are considered.
- Scorza was able to achieve a unitary theory, illustrated in a fundamental essay (1916).
- In 1916 Scorza transferred to the University of Catania, then in 1921 he moved to Naples.
- Scorza exposes a general field theory - for which he uses the term 'corpi numerici' - and an associative algebra theory, pointing also to their applications within the geometrical field.
- Despite the years of difficulty when he was a young man, Scorza published more than 160 works over his career, most importantly in algebraic geometry and related algebraic fields, but also very many general works and textbooks.
- The most original paper is the one in which Scorza apparently was the first to investigate which groups can be the union of a finite number of their proper subgroups.
- In 1909, following the death of Giovanni Vailati, Scorza joined Guido Castelnuovo and Federico Enriques as the Italian delegates on the International Commission on Mathematical Instruction.
Born 29 September 1876, Morano Calabro, Cosenza, Calabria, Italy. Died 6 August 1939, Rome, Italy.
View full biography at MacTutor
Tags relevant for this person:
Group Theory, 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
