Special Session 23

Mathematical connections between Italy and Brazil. The circulation of Italian scholars in Latin America and the foundation of the first Brazilian universities

Organizers: Maria Giulia Lugaresi (University of Ferrara, Italy), Mariana Feiteiro Cavalari (Federal University of Itajubá, Brazil)

MSC codes: 01A60, 01A72, 01A73

Description:

During the 1930s the Italian mathematical and physical community was involved in the project of cultural exchanges – Francesco Severi, Tullio Levi Civita and Enrico Fermi lectured in a series of conferences in Latin America (Argentina, Brazil, Uruguay) – and of the creation of a faculty of mathematics in Brazil. The Italian mission was jointly carried out by the Brazilian and Italian governments between 1934 and 1939, together with the Italian Fascist National Party. The University of São Paulo (USP) was founded in 1934 by merging three existing faculties in the city of São Paulo, namely the Polytechnic School, the College of Medicine and the Law School, and by founding the Faculty of Philosophy, Sciences and Letters (FFCL). Soon after the foundation of USP, the director of the FFCL Theodoro Ramos travelled to Europe to select and hire new professors and specialists. Italy was responsible for mathematical and physical sciences, Severi and Fermi proposed the mathematician Luigi Fantappiè (1901-1956), a pupil of Vito Volterra, and the physicist Gleb Wataghin (1899-1986) for professorships, respectively Mathematical Analysis and Physics, at USP. In 1936 Giacomo Albanese (1890-1948) was sent to Brazil, holding the chair of Analytical, Projective and Descriptive Geometry. Some years later, Gabriele Mammana (1893-1942), Luigi Sobrero (19091979) and Achille Bassi (1907-1973) were hired to work at the University of Brazil, a branch of the Italian mission in Rio de Janeiro city. Sobrero was one of the «Professores estrangeiros contratados» of the Facultade Nacional de Filosofia of Rio de Janeiro for the teaching of «Fisica Teorica e Fisica Superior» (1939-1940) and of «Fisica General e Experimental e Fisica Matematica» (1941-1942). Upon arriving in Brazil in 1939, Achille Bassi taught Advanced Geometry and Complements of Geometry at the Faculdade Nacional de Filosofia da Universidade do Brasil. He taught Topology at USP in the 1940s. Bassi remained in Brazil until his death. In the field of applied mathematics, the connection between the Italian Istituto per le Applicazioni del Calcolo (IAC) and Brazilian mathematicians was established in 1940 by Gabriele Mammana and other collaborators of the IAC. Mauro Picone (leader of the International Computation Centre established in Rome by UNESCO), during his mission to São Paulo, combined mathematical research with efforts to provide Brazil with a computer. After the promulgation of the racial laws (1938), some Italian Jewish mathematicians saw Brazil as a possible host country. Alessandro Terracini, who eventually went to Tucumán (Argentina), sought to obtain a position in Brazil. Beppo Levi, who emigrated with his family to Argentina and was appointed at the University of Rosario, also left a mark on mathematics in Brazil. Giorgio Mortara, a statistician, arrived in Rio de Janeiro in January 1939 and remained in Brazil for the rest of his life, although with frequent stays in Italy. Starting from the historical studies that have been developed in the last decades both in the Brazilian and in the Italian community of historians of mathematics, our proposal aims to investigate the mutual relationship between Italian and Brazilian mathematical communities in the first half of the 20th century from a double perspective. On the Brazilian side, the research will investigate the impact that Italian mathematicians had on the development of mathematical research in Brazil, as well as the influences and repercussions on teaching and on university textbooks. Particularly significant in this sense are the figures of Omar Catunda (1906–1986) and Cândido Silva Dias (1914–1990), assistants and later successors of Fantappiè at the University of São Paulo. Catunda was also the author of the handbook “Curso de analise matematica”, which was inspired by the teaching of Fantappié. On the Italian side, the presence of Brazilian scholars in Italy will be analyzed, especially in Rome at the Istituto Nazionale di Alta Matematica (National Institute of Higher Mathematics, INdAM) and at the Istituto Nazionale per le Applicazioni del Calcolo (National Institute for the Application of Calculus, INAC), focusing on their participation in academic activities and research, that were published in some Italian scientific journals.