Alessandro Figà Talamanca (born in

Rome , established_title = Founded , established_date = 753 BC , founder = King Romulus (legendary) , image_map = Map of comune of Rome (metropolitan city of Capital Rome, region Lazio, Italy).svg , map_caption ...

, 25 May 1938) is an Italian mathematician who has been given several prestigious tasks, both in Italy and abroad. Several times, he took part in managing the Italian University system, and shared his opinions in newspapers, such as ''

La Repubblica ''la Repubblica'' (; the Republic) is an Italian daily general-interest newspaper. It was founded in 1976 in Rome by Gruppo Editoriale L'Espresso (now known as GEDI Gruppo Editoriale) and led by Eugenio Scalfari, Carlo Caracciolo and Arnol ...

. ''He was a close friend of Carlo Pucci, a mathematician who spent most of his energy in improving the method of teaching maths in Italy, and the management of Italian Maths Departments. (Pucci was, especially, the re-founder of the

Istituto Nazionale di Alta Matematica Francesco Severi The Istituto Nazionale di Alta Matematica Francesco Severi, abbreviated as INdAM, is a government created non-profit research institution whose main purpose is to promote research in the field of mathematics and its applications and the diffusion ...

.) From 1995 to 2003, Figà Talamanca, successor to Pucci, was President of the Istituto, and he continued what Pucci had set up. He was also Vice-President of the

European Mathematical Society The European Mathematical Society (EMS) is a European organization dedicated to the development of mathematics in Europe. Its members are different mathematical societies in Europe, academic institutions and individual mathematicians. The current ...

. Moreover, he was a member of the Consiglio Universitario Nazionale and, from 1999 to 2004, of the Comitato nazionale per la valutazione del sistema universitario.

Career

Figà Talamanca did research, and got valuable results, in the field of harmonic analysis, on aleatory Fourier series and the diffusion process, mostly in Rome - at

La Sapienza The Sapienza University of Rome ( it, Sapienza – Università di Roma), also called simply Sapienza or the University of Rome, and formally the Università degli Studi di Roma "La Sapienza", is a public research university located in Rome, Ita ...

-, but also in the US, especially in the Sixties. During that period on a Fulbright scholarship, he joined research activities in California,

UCLA The University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) is a public land-grant research university in Los Angeles, California. UCLA's academic roots were established in 1881 as a teachers college then known as the southern branch of the California ...

, where he got his

Ph.D A Doctor of Philosophy (PhD, Ph.D., or DPhil; Latin: or ') is the most common degree at the highest academic level awarded following a course of study. PhDs are awarded for programs across the whole breadth of academic fields. Because it is ...

, in 1964, and, in the same year, was Acting Assistant Professor, and met the well-famous French-American mathematician Serge Lang, and also in Boston, Moore Instructor at

MIT The Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) is a private land-grant research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Established in 1861, MIT has played a key role in the development of modern technology and science, and is one of the m ...

from 1966 to 1968. While teaching at MIT, he read Tom M. Apostol's

Calculus Calculus, originally called infinitesimal calculus or "the calculus of infinitesimals", is the mathematical study of continuous change, in the same way that geometry is the study of shape, and algebra is the study of generalizations of arithm ...

, a two-volume book, and decided to bring it back to Italy - when he was to become Professor at the

University of Genova The University of Genoa, known also with the acronym UniGe ( it, Università di Genova), is one of the largest universities in Italy. It is located in the city of Genoa and regional Metropolitan City of Genoa, on the Italian Riviera in the Liguri ...

- with him: he was the one who proposed an Italian edition of Apostol's work to a printer in Turin, and he himself overwatched the translation,''Edizione italiana a cura di Alessandro Figà Talamanca, Calcolo, Tom M. Apostol, editore Bollati Boringhieri, 2002, , just one page before the index in 1977. He was lecturer at Berkeley, from 1968 to 1969, then at

Yale Yale University is a private research university in New Haven, Connecticut. Established in 1701 as the Collegiate School, it is the third-oldest institution of higher education in the United States and among the most prestigious in the wor ...

, from 1969 to 1970, then Visiting Professor in

Maryland Maryland ( ) is a state in the Mid-Atlantic region of the United States. It shares borders with Virginia, West Virginia, and the District of Columbia to its south and west; Pennsylvania to its north; and Delaware and the Atlantic Ocean to ...

, in

Washington Washington commonly refers to: * Washington (state), United States * Washington, D.C., the capital of the United States ** A metonym for the federal government of the United States ** Washington metropolitan area, the metropolitan area centered o ...

Wales Wales ( cy, Cymru ) is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It is bordered by England to the east, the Irish Sea to the north and west, the Celtic Sea to the south west and the Bristol Channel to the south. It had a population in ...

and Sydney. He taught Calculus for 50 years, including both Italian and American universities. Mostly, he referred to La Sapienza: in 2007, he became General Director of the Maths' Department there, but he was to leave in 2009 because he was 71. He is able to speak English, and

Modern Greek Modern Greek (, , or , ''Kiní Neoellinikí Glóssa''), generally referred to by speakers simply as Greek (, ), refers collectively to the dialects of the Greek language spoken in the modern era, including the official standardized form of the ...

. He has always been up against

Eugene Garfield Eugene Eli Garfield (September 16, 1925 – February 26, 2017) was an American linguist and businessman, one of the founders of bibliometrics and scientometrics. He helped to create ''Current Contents'', ''Science Citation Index'' (SCI), ''Journ ...

's Impact factor system in Science. (''See here
L'Impact Factor nella valutazione della ricerca e nello sviluppo dell’editoria scientifica
'.)

Selected publications

*with John Price: *with Claudio Nebbia: * *with Tim Steger:

References

External links

(titles in English) {{DEFAULTSORT:Talamanca, Alessandro Figa 1938 births Living people 20th-century Italian mathematicians Massachusetts Institute of Technology School of Science faculty Presidents of the Italian Mathematical Union