◀ ▲ ▶History / 19th-century / Person: Vacca, Giovanni Enrico Eugenio
Person: Vacca, Giovanni Enrico Eugenio
Giovanni Vacca was an Italian mathematician and historian of science. He was interested in the history of Chinese science.
Mathematical Profile (Excerpt):
- Vacca entered the University of Genoa to study mathematics.
- However in 1894 Crispi dissolved the Party and the leaders of the Party, including Vacca were banished from Genoa.
- The banishment was in 1897 and, fortunately, this allowed Vacca to graduate that year before moving away from Genoa.
- In 1899 Vacca went to Hannover to study the unpublished manuscripts of Leibniz.
- The following year Vacca attended the First International Congress of Philosophy which was held in Paris in 1900.
- In 1903 Vacca published a collection of short works by Leibniz and some of his papers which had not been previously published.
- However before this, in 1902, Vacca's position as Peano's assistant came to an end and he had returned to Genoa.
- Vacca, on his return to Genoa in 1902, worked for the Party again becoming a member of the Socialist Council and also a member of the national party administration.
- However Vacca continued his mathematical work and gave a course at the University of Genoa on mathematical logic.
- In 1904 Vacca returned to Turin and was assistant to Peano for one further year.
- In 1905, this interest in Chinese became the road that Vacca decided to follow.
- They shared mathematical interests and certainly Vacca continued his mathematical research and interest in the history of mathematics.
- Vacca would be one of the editors of Vailati's collected works, published in 1911, two years after Vailati's death.
- Vacca spent 1907-08 in western China, spending a year in the city of Cheng-tu.
- In 1922 Vacca succeeded his old professor of History and Geography of East Asia to the chair at Florence.
- Vacca taught Chinese language and literature there until he retired in 1947.
- Despite his change of topic in mid career, Vacca continued his Chinese and mathematical studies in parallel.
- For example in 1928 Peano presented a paper by Vacca on Fermat's method of descent to the Academy of Sciences of Turin.
Born 18 November 1872, Genoa, Italy. Died 6 January 1953, Rome, Italy.
View full biography at MacTutor
Tags relevant for this person:
Origin Italy
Thank you to the contributors under CC BY-SA 4.0! 
- Github:
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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
