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This article is about the mathematician. For the mathematical symbol, see Levi-Civita symbol.
Tullio Levi-Civita
Tullio Levi-Civita
29 March 1873
Born
Padua, Italy
Nationality Italian
Alma mater University of Padua
Tensor calculus
Levi-Civita symbol
Known for
Levi-Civita connection
Levi-Civita field
Scientific career
Fields Mathematics
Institutions University of Rome
Doctoral advisor Gregorio Ricci-Curbastro
Doctoral students
Evan Tom Davies
Albert Joseph McConnell
Octav Onicescu
Attilio Palatini
Antonio Signorini
Libera Trevisani
Gheorghe Vrânceanu
Biography[edit]
Born into an Italian Jewish family in Padua, Levi-Civita was the son of Giacomo Levi-Civita, a
lawyer and former senator. He graduated in 1892 from the University of Padua Faculty of
Mathematics. In 1894 he earned a teaching diploma after which he was appointed to the
Faculty of Science teacher's college in Pavia. In 1898 he was appointed to the Padua Chair of
Rational Mechanics (left uncovered by death of Ernesto Padova) where he met and, in 1914,
married Libera Trevisani, one of his pupils.[5] He remained in his position at Padua until 1918,
when he was appointed to the Chair of Higher Analysis at the University of Rome; in another
two years he was appointed to the Chair of Mechanics there.
In 1936, receiving an invitation from Einstein, Levi-Civita traveled to Princeton, United States
and lived there with him for a year. But when the risk of war in Europe again rose, he returned
to Italy. The 1938 race laws enacted by the Italian Fascist government deprived Levi-Civita of
his professorship and of his membership of all scientific societies. Isolated from the scientific
world, he died in his apartment in Rome in 1941.
Among his PhD students were Octav Onicescu, Attilio Palatini and Gheorghe Vrânceanu.
Later on, when asked what he liked best about Italy, Einstein said "spaghetti and Levi-Civita".
[10]
The Royal Society awarded him the Sylvester Medal in 1922 and elected him as a foreign
member in 1930. He became an honorary member of the London Mathematical Society, of the
Royal Society of Edinburgh, and of the Edinburgh Mathematical Society, following his
participation in their colloquium in 1930 at the University of St Andrews. He was also a
member of the Accademia dei Lincei and the Pontifical Academy of Sciences.
Like Vito Volterra, being Jewish and anti-fascist, Levi-Civita was expelled from the Academy
in his country as a consequence of the Italian Racial Laws.
Works[edit]
All his mathematical works, except for the monographs, the treatises and the textbooks are
published in the six volumes of his "Collected works", in a revised typographical form, both
amending typographical errors and author's oversights.
Articles[edit]
Ricci, Gregorio; Levi-Civita, Tullio (1900), "Méthodes de calcul différentiel absolu et leurs
applications" [Methods of the absolute differential calculus and their applications],
Mathematische Annalen (in French), 54 (1–2): 125–201, doi:10.1007/BF01454201,
JFM 31.0297.01, S2CID 120009332.
Levi-Civita, Tullio (1904), "Sulla integrazione della equazione di Hamilton-Jacobi per
separazione di variabili" [On the integration of the Hamilton-Jacobi equation by
separation of variables], Mathematische Annalen (in Italian), 59 (3): 383–397,
doi:10.1007/bf01445149, JFM 35.0362.02, S2CID 123144759.
Levi-Civita, Tullio (1917), "Nozione di parallelismo in una varietà qualunque e
conseguente specificazione geometrica della curvatura riemanniana" [Notion of
parallelism in any variety and consequent geometric specification of the Riemannian
curvature], Rendiconti del Circolo Matematico di Palermo (in Italian), 42: 173–205,
doi:10.1007/BF03014898, JFM 46.1125.02, S2CID 122088291.
Books[edit]
Tullio Levi-Civita and Ugo Amaldi Lezioni di meccanica razionale (Bologna: N. Zanichelli,
1923)
Tullio Levi-Civita Questioni di meccanica classica e relativistica (Bologna, N. Zanichelli,
1924)
Tullio Levi-Civita Lezioni di calcolo differenziale assoluto (Roma: Alberto Stock Editore
1925)
The Absolute Differential Calculus (London & Glasgow, Blackie & Son 1927) (edited by
Enrico Persico, trans. by Marjorie Long)[11]
Tullio Levi-Civita and Enrico Persico Fondamenti di meccanica relativistica (Bologna : N.
Zanichelli, 1928)
Tullio Levi-Civita Caratteristiche dei sistemi differenziali e propagazione ondosa
(Bologna, N. Zanichelli 1931)
Tullio Levi-Civita and Ugo Amaldi Nozioni di balistica esterna (Bologna: N. Zanichelli,
1935)
Tullio Levi Problème des N Corps en relativité générale (Gauthier-Villars, Paris, 1950,
Mémorial des sciences mathématiques ISSN 0025-9187)
Levi-Civita, Tullio (1954), Opere Matematiche. Memorie e Note [Collected mathematical
works. Memoirs and notes] (PDF) (in French and Italian), Volume primo (1893−1900),
Pubblicate a cura dell'Accademia Nazionale dei Lincei, Roma: Zanichelli Editore,
pp. XXX, 564.
Levi-Civita, Tullio (1956), Opere Matematiche. Memorie e Note [Collected mathematical
works. Memoirs and notes] (PDF) (in French and Italian), Volume secondo (1901−1907),
Pubblicate a cura dell'Accademia Nazionale dei Lincei, Roma: Zanichelli Editore, pp. VI,
636.
Levi-Civita, Tullio (1957), Opere Matematiche. Memorie e Note [Collected mathematical
works. Memoirs and notes] (PDF) (in French and Italian), Volume terzo (1908−1916),
Pubblicate a cura dell'Accademia Nazionale dei Lincei, Roma: Zanichelli Editore, pp. VI,
600.
Levi-Civita, Tullio (1960), Opere Matematiche. Memorie e Note [Collected mathematical
works. Memoirs and notes] (PDF) (in French and Italian), Volume quarto (1917−1928),
Pubblicate a cura dell'Accademia Nazionale dei Lincei, Roma: Zanichelli Editore, pp. VI,
608.
Levi-Civita, Tullio (1970), Opere Matematiche. Memorie e Note [Collected mathematical
works. Memoirs and notes] (in French and Italian), Volume quinto (1929−1937),
Pubblicate a cura dell'Accademia Nazionale dei Lincei, Roma: Zanichelli Editore, pp. VI,
670.
Levi-Civita, Tullio (1970), Opere Matematiche. Memorie e Note [Collected mathematical
works. Memoirs and notes] (in French and Italian), Volume sesto (1938−1941),
Pubblicate a cura dell'Accademia Nazionale dei Lincei, Roma: Zanichelli Editore, pp. VI,
502.
Levi-Civita, Tullio (2007) [1895], Pamphlets, mathematics, University of Michigan,
retrieved 14 January 2017. A collection of some of his published papers (in their original
typographical form), probably an unordered uncorrected collection of offprints.
See also[edit]
Levi-Civita connection
Levi-Civita crater
Levi-Civita field
Levi-Civita parallelogramoid
Levi-Civita symbol
[ di ]
Notes[edit]
1. ^ Tullio Levi-Civita. Nndb.com. Retrieved on 2011-08-14.
2. ^ (Levi-Civita 1904)
3. ^ O'Connor, John J.; Robertson, Edmund F., "Tullio Levi-Civita", MacTutor History of
Mathematics archive, University of St Andrews.
4. ^ Tullio Levi-Civita at the Mathematics Genealogy Project
5. ^ Goodstein, Judith R. (2018). Einstein's Italian mathematicians : Ricci, Levi-Civita, and
the birth of general relativity. American Mathematical Society. pp. 115–117. ISBN 978-
1470428464.
6. ^ (Ricci & Levi-Civita 1900).
7. ^ (Levi-Civita 1917)
8. ^ Iurato, Giuseppe (2016). "On the history of Levi-Civita's parallel transport".
arXiv:1608.04986. Bibcode:2016arXiv160804986I.
9. ^ 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.
10. ^ Jackson, Allyn (1996). "Celebrating the 100th Annual Meeting of the AMS". In Case,
Bettye Anne (ed.). A Century of Mathematical Meetings. Providence, RI: American
Mathematical Society. pp. 10–18. ISBN 0-8218-0465-0.
11. ^ Rainich, G. Y. (1928). "Levi-Civita on Tensor Calculus" (PDF). Bull. Amer. Math. Soc.
34: 775–777. doi:10.1090/s0002-9904-1928-04644-x.
References[edit]
Biographical references[edit]
"Professor T. Levi-Civita, Member of Vatican Academy," The Jewish Chronicle (UK),
February 6, 1942.
General references[edit]
Segre, Beniamino (1975), "Parole introduttive al Convegno", in Segre, Beniamino;
Cattaneo, Carlo; Bompiani, Enrico; Colombo, Giuseppe; Finzi, Bruno; Graffi, Dario;
Radicati di Brozolo, Luigi; Tricomi, Francesco Giacomo (eds.), Tullio Levi-Civita.
Convegno internazionale celebrativo del centenario della nascita (Roma, 17–19 dicembre
1973) [Tullio Levi-Civita. International congress for the celebration of the centenary of
his birth (Rome, 17–19 December 1973)], Atti dei Convegni Lincei (in Italian), 8, Roma:
Accademia Nazionale dei Lincei, pp. 171–177, ISSN 0391-805X. The "Inaugural address"
(English translation of the contribution title) of Beniamino Segre, a commemoration
describing briefly many aspects of the life and the work of Levi-Civita.
Scientific references[edit]
Aczel, Amir D. (1999), God's Equation, New York: MJF Books, pp. 236, ISBN 1-56858-
139-4.
Graffi, Dario (1975), "L'Elettromagnetismo in Levi-Civita", in Segre, Beniamino;
Cattaneo, Carlo; Bompiani, Enrico; Colombo, Giuseppe; Finzi, Bruno; Graffi, Dario;
Radicati di Brozolo, Luigi; Tricomi, Francesco Giacomo (eds.), Tullio Levi-Civita.
Convegno internazionale celebrativo del centenario della nascita (Roma, 17–19 dicembre
1973) [Tullio Levi-Civita. International congress for the celebration of the centenary of
his birth (Rome, 17–19 December 1973)], Atti dei Convegni Lincei (in Italian), 8, Roma:
Accademia Nazionale dei Lincei, pp. 171–177, ISSN 0391-805X. "Electromagnetism in the
work of Levi-Civita" (English translation of the contribution title) is a survey of some of
the works of Levi-Civita on the theory of electromagnetism.
Loinger, Angelo (2007). "Einstein, Levi-Civita, and Bianchi relations".
arXiv:physics/0702244..
External links[edit]
Tullio Levi-Civita at the Mathematics Genealogy Project
Scienceworld biography
Another short biography
An Italian short biography of Tullio Levi-Civita in Edizione Nazionale Mathematica
Italiana online.