Giuseppe Peano

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Giuseppe Peano bigraphy, stories - Mathematicians

Giuseppe Peano : biography

27 August 1858 – 20 April 1932

Giuseppe Peano ( 27 August 1858 – 20 April 1932) was an Italian mathematician, whose work was of philosophical value. The author of over 200 books and papers, he was a founder of mathematical logic and set theory, to which he contributed much notation. The standard axiomatization of the natural numbers is named the Peano axioms in his honor. As part of this effort, he made key contributions to the modern rigorous and systematic treatment of the method of mathematical induction. He spent most of his career teaching mathematics at the University of Turin.

Milestones and honors received

  • 1881: Published first paper.
  • 1884: Calcolo Differenziale e Principii di Calcolo Integrale.
  • 1887: Applicazioni Geometriche del Calcolo Infinitesimale.
  • 1889: Appointed Professor First Class at the Royal Military Academy.
  • 1890: Appointed Extraordinary Professor of infinitesimal calculus at the University of Turin.
  • 1891: Made a member of the Academy of Science, Torino.
  • 1893: Lezioni di Analisi Infinitesimale, 2 vols.
  • 1895: Promoted to Ordinary Professor.
  • 1901: Made Knight of the Order of Saints Maurizio and Lazzaro.
  • 1903: Announces Latino sine flexione.
  • 1905: Made Knight of the Order of the Crown of Italy. Elected a corresponding member of the Accademia dei Lincei in Rome, the highest Italian honour for scientists.
  • 1908: Fifth and final edition of the Formulario mathematico.
  • 1917: Made an Officer of the Crown of Italy.
  • 1921: Promoted to Commendatore of the Crown of Italy.

Biography

Peano was born and raised on a farm at Spinetta, a hamlet now belonging to Cuneo, Piedmont, Italy. He attended the Liceo classico Cavour in Turin, and enrolled at the University of Turin in 1876, graduating in 1880 with high honours, after which the University employed him to assist first Enrico D’Ovidio, and then Angelo Genocchi, the Chair of Infinitesimal calculus. Due to Genocchi’s poor health, Peano took over the teaching of the infinitesimal calculus course within 2 years. His first major work, a textbook on calculus, was published in 1884 and was credited to Genocchi. A few years later, Peano published his first book dealing with mathematical logic. Here the modern symbols for the union and intersection of sets appeared for the first time.

In 1887, Peano married Carola Crosio, the daughter of the Turin-based painter Luigi Crosio, known for painting the Refugium Peccatorum Madonna.. Schoenstatt webpage In 1886, he began teaching concurrently at the Royal Military Academy, and was promoted to Professor First Class in 1889. The next year, the University of Turin also granted him his full professorship. Peano’s famous space-filling curve appeared in 1890 as a counterexample. He used it to show that a continuous curve cannot always be enclosed in an arbitrarily small region. This was an early example of what came to be known as a fractal.

In 1890 Peano founded the journal Rivista di Matematica, which published its first issue in January 1891. In 1891 Peano started the Formulario Project. It was to be an "Encyclopedia of Mathematics", containing all known formulae and theorems of mathematical science using a standard notation invented by Peano. In 1897, the first International Congress of Mathematicians was held in Zürich. Peano was a key participant, presenting a paper on mathematical logic. He also started to become increasingly occupied with Formulario to the detriment of his other work.

In 1898 he presented a note to the Academy about binary numeration and its ability to be used to represent the sounds of languages. He also became so frustrated with publishing delays (due to his demand that formulae be printed on one line) that he purchased a printing press.

Paris was the venue for the Second International Congress of Mathematicians in 1900. The conference was preceded by the First International Conference of Philosophy where Peano was a member of the patronage committee. He presented a paper which posed the question of correctly formed definitions in mathematics, i.e. "how do you define a definition?". This became one of Peano’s main philosophical interests for the rest of his life. At the conference Peano met Bertrand Russell and gave him a copy of Formulario. Russell was so struck by Peano’s innovative logical symbols that he left the conference and returned home to study Peano’s text.