Gaetano Fichera
| Gaetano Fichera | |
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Gaetano Fichera in 1976 (photo by Konrad Jacobs)
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| Born | 8 February 1922 Acireale |
| Died | 1 June 1996 (aged 74) Rome |
| Nationality | Italian |
| Fields | Mathematics |
| Institutions | |
| Alma mater | Università di Roma, 1941 |
| Doctoral advisor | Mauro Picone |
| Doctoral students | see the teaching activity section |
| Known for | |
| Notable awards |
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Gaetano Fichera (8 February 1922 – 1 June 1996) was an Italian mathematician, working in mathematical analysis, linear elasticity, partial differential equations and several complex variables. He was born in Acireale, and died in Rome.
He was born in Acireale, a town near Catania in Sicily, the elder of the four sons of Giuseppe Fichera and Marianna Abate. His father Giuseppe was a professor of mathematics and influenced the young Gaetano starting his lifelong passion. In his young years he was a talented football player. On 1 February 1943 he was in the Italian Army and during the events of September 1943 he was taken prisoner by the Nazist troops, kept imprisoned in Teramo and then sent to Verona: he succeeded in escaping from there and reached the Italian region of Emilia-Romagna, spending with partisans the last year of war. After the war he was first in Rome and then in Trieste, where he met Matelda Colautti, which become his wife in 1952.
After graduating from the liceo classico in only two years, he entered the University of Catania at the age of 16, being there from 1937 to 1939 and studying under Pia Nalli. Then he went to the university of Rome, where in 1941 he earned his laurea with magna cum laude under the direction of Mauro Picone, when he was only 19. He was immediately appointed by Picone as an assistant professor to his chair and as a researcher at the Istituto Nazionale per le Applicazioni del Calcolo, becoming his pupil. After the war he went back to Rome working with Mauro Picone: in 1948 he became "Libero Docente" (free professor) of mathematical analysis and in 1949 he was appointed as full professor at the University of Trieste. As he remembers in (Fichera 1991, p. 14), in both cases one of the members of the judging commission was Renato Caccioppoli, which become a close friend of him. From 1956 onward he was full professor at the University of Rome in the chair of mathematical analysis and then at the Istituto Nazionale di Alta Matematica in the chair of higher analysis, succeeding to Luigi Fantappiè. He retired from university teaching in 1992, but was professionally very active until his death in 1996: particularly, as a member of the Accademia Nazionale dei Lincei and first director of the journal Rendiconti Lincei – Matematica e Applicazioni he succeeded in reviving the reputation of this publication.
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