Giuseppe Vitali
| Giuseppe Vitali | |
|---|---|
 |
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| Born |
26 August 1875 Ravenna, Italy |
| Died | 29 February 1932 (aged 56) Bologna, Italy |
| Nationality | Italian |
| Fields | Mathematics |
Giuseppe Vitali (26 August 1875 – 29 February 1932) was an Italian mathematician who worked in several branches of mathematical analysis. He gives his name to several entities in mathematics, most notably the Vitali set with which he was the first to give an example of a non-measurable subset of real numbers.
Giuseppe Vitali was the eldest of five children. His father, Domenico Vitali, worked for a railway company in Ravenna while his mother, Zenobia Casadio, was able to stay at home and look after her children.
He completed his elementary education in Ravenna in 1886, and then spent three years at the Ginnasio Comunale in Ravenna where his performance in the final examinations of 1889 was average.
He continued his secondary education in Ravenna at the Dante Alighieri High School. There his mathematics teacher was Giuseppe Nonni who quickly realised the young Giuseppe had great potential. He wrote to Giuseppe's father, in a letter dated 28 June 1895, asking that he allow his son to pursue further studies in mathematics.
He became a student of the Scuola Normale Superiore in Pisa and graduated to the University of Pisa in 1899 . He spent two years as assistant before leaving the academic world. From 1901 to 1922 he taught in secondary schools, first in Sassari, then Voghera and then from 1904 at the Classical High School Christopher Columbus in Genoa. In those years he was involved in politics as a member of the Italian Socialist Party until it was forcibly disbanded by the fascists in 1922. His pursuit of mathematical analysis then led him to almost total social isolation. In 1923 he won a position as professor of calculus at the University of Modena and Reggio Emilia . He also taught at the Universities of Padua (1924 to 1925) and Bologna (from 1930). He was an invited speaker at the International Congress of Mathematicians held in Bologna in September 1928, giving the lecture Rapporti inattesi su alcuni rami della matematica (Unexpected relationships of some branches of mathematics).
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