Speaker: Guillermo Curbera Costello (University of Seville)
Date: 12 November 2020, 19:00 h
Location: ONLINE – [http://www.edaddeplata.org/](http://www.edaddeplata.org/)
Introduced by: Manuel de León (ICMAT-CSIC)
Abstract: At the turn of the 19th to the 20th century in Palermo, a tense social and political situation coexisted with the excesses of a decadent nobility. This moment in the hyperbolic city was portrayed in the novel Il Gattopardo (Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa, 1958), alongside the beautiful modern creations of the Liberty style. Within the rich landscape of the novel, a first-rate international mathematical activity emerged unexpectedly from this historical context. Its main exponent was the young mathematician Giovanni Battista Guccia, a wealthy lover of the Liberty style and a relative of the historical figure behind Il Gattopardo. This presentation will unravel the origins and the splendour of this scientific activity, which led to the creation of the world’s largest mathematical society in 1914. Its tragic end was caused by Mussolini’s racial discrimination laws and the Allied bombings of 1943.
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About the speaker
Guillermo Curbera is Professor of Mathematical Analysis at the University of Seville. His scientific work focuses on the study of function spaces, operators, and measures. He has served as editor-in-chief of the Royal Spanish Mathematical Society. Since 2007, he has been the curator of the historical archives of the International Mathematical Union (Berlin). He coordinated the “Socio-economic Impact Study of Mathematics in Spain,” presented in 2019. He was commissioner of the exhibition “The 20th Century through Mathematics,” created for the 2006 International Congress of Mathematicians (Madrid) and later displayed at several Spanish universities. He is the author of the book “Mathematicians of the World: Unite!” (AK Peters, 2009), which was the official 2010 gift of the International Mathematical Union to the Fields Medal recipients. Currently, together with Benedetto Bongiorno, he has written the book “Giovanni Battista Guccia. Pioneer of International Cooperation in Mathematics” (Springer-Nature, 2018).
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