Domenico Alfonso Emmanuele Montesano (Potenza, 22 December 1863 – Naples, 1 October 1930) was an Italian mathematician. He influenced and developed theory on linear congruences and on conic bilinear complexes.

Family life

Domenico was born in

Potenza, Italy Potenza (, also , ; , Potentino dialect: ''Putenz'') is a ''comune'' in the Southern Italian region of Basilicata (former Lucania). Capital of the Province of Potenza and the Basilicata region, the city is the highest regional capital and on ...

in 1863 to Leonardo Antonio Montesano and the duchess Isabella Schiavone of Aragona, Italy. They had nine children, five boys and four girls. Two sons became lawyers, two became medical doctors, and Domenico studied mathematics. The daughters studied through to high school, learning music and painting. Domenico's brother, Giuseppe Ferruccio Montesano, became one of the founders of psychology and

child psychiatry Child and adolescent psychiatry (or pediatric psychiatry) is a branch of psychiatry that focuses on the diagnosis, treatment, and prevention of mental disorders in children, adolescents, and their families. It investigates the biopsychosocial fact ...

in Italy.

Education and career

Domenico was a disciple of

Luigi Cremona Antonio Luigi Gaudenzio Giuseppe Cremona (7 December 1830 – 10 June 1903) was an Italian mathematician. His life was devoted to the study of geometry and reforming advanced mathematical teaching in Italy. He worked on algebraic curves and alge ...

and

Giuseppe Battaglini __NOTOC__ Giuseppe Battaglini (11 January 1826 – 29 April 1894) was an Italian mathematician.D'Ovidio (1895). He studied mathematics at the Scuola d'Applicazione di Ponti e Strade (School of Bridges and Roads) of Naples. In 1860 he was appointe ...

and graduated in Rome in 1884; after a brief period of improvement and assistantship, in 1885, at the age of twenty-two, he became a professor of projective and descriptive geometry at the

University of Bologna The University of Bologna ( it, Alma Mater Studiorum – Università di Bologna, UNIBO) is a public research university in Bologna, Italy. Founded in 1088 by an organised guild of students (''studiorum''), it is the oldest university in continuo ...

. In 1893, he became a full professor in the same chair at the University of Naples Federico II and later in 1895 to the teaching position in higher geometry. For many years he also held the chair of higher mathematics. In 1903 he was Dean of the Faculty of Mathematical Sciences. He was a member of the Royal Academy of Sciences of Naples, and in 1921 he became president of the Academy of Physical and Mathematical Sciences of Naples. He also served on the board of the Accademia Pontaniana and a member of the Palermo Mathematical Circle. He was honored as Commander of the Order of the Crown of Italy and Knight and Officer of the Order of Saints Maurice and Lazarus. He became a member of the

Freemasons Freemasonry or Masonry refers to fraternal organisations that trace their origins to the local guilds of stonemasons that, from the end of the 13th century, regulated the qualifications of stonemasons and their interaction with authorities ...

at a

lodge Lodge is originally a term for a relatively small building, often associated with a larger one. Lodge or The Lodge may refer to: Buildings and structures Specific * The Lodge (Australia), the official Canberra residence of the Prime Ministe ...

Bologna Bologna (, , ; egl, label= Emilian, Bulåggna ; lat, Bononia) is the capital and largest city of the Emilia-Romagna region in Northern Italy. It is the seventh most populous city in Italy with about 400,000 inhabitants and 150 different nat ...

, during Cremona's term there as Venerable Master (and thus could personally conduct the initiation ceremonies of his protégé), with

Giosuè Carducci Giosuè Alessandro Giuseppe Carducci (; 27 July 1835 – 16 February 1907) was an Italian poet, writer, literary critic and teacher. He was very noticeably influential, and was regarded as the official national poet of modern Italy. In 1906, h ...

Secretary A secretary, administrative professional, administrative assistant, executive assistant, administrative officer, administrative support specialist, clerk, military assistant, management assistant, office secretary, or personal assistant is a w ...

. He died in Naples on 1 October 1930.

Works

He made important contributions to the theory of

Cremona transformation In algebraic geometry, the Cremona group, introduced by , is the group of birational automorphisms of the n-dimensional projective space over a field It is denoted by Cr(\mathbb^n(k)) or Bir(\mathbb^n(k)) or Cr_n(k). The Cremona group is naturally ...

s and handled the linear congruences and conical bilinear complexes. He discovered 30 new

rational surface In algebraic geometry, a branch of mathematics, a rational surface is a surface birational geometry, birationally equivalent to the projective plane, or in other words a rational variety of dimension two. Rational surfaces are the simplest of the 1 ...

s of the 5th order. He was the author of over fifty scholarly publications relating to Cremonian address geometry. Montesano's studies that mostly interested the international academic environment concerned the geometry of the straight line and the Cremonian transformations. Among his major works was a ''Treatise on Projective geometry''. Some of his theories are still the object of interpretation and study by contemporary mathematicians. He also worked on fifth order

algebraic surface In mathematics, an algebraic surface is an algebraic variety of dimension two. In the case of geometry over the field of complex numbers, an algebraic surface has complex dimension two (as a complex manifold, when it is non-singular) and so of di ...

s, more commonly referred to as quintic surfaces.

Notes

* ''The Legacy of Mario Pieri in Geometry and Arithmetic'' * Gaetano Scorza, "Commemoration of the resident partner Domenico Montesano read by the corresponding member Gaetano Scorza", in ''Rendiconti of the Academy of Mathematical Sciences of Naples'' , 3rd Series, Naples, 1930. * Roberto Marcolongo, "In memory of Prof. Domenico Montesano", in ''Bulletin of the Italian Mathematical Union'' , Rome, 1931. * A. Tummarello, in ''Mathematics Bulletin'' , Florence, 1931. * Francesco G. Tricomi, "Italian mathematicians of the first century of the unitary state", in ''Memories of the Academy of Sciences of Turin. Class of physical, mathematical and natural sciences'' , series VI, t. 1, 1962–66, p. 1-120. * "Brief History and Future Perspectives of the Institute of Mathematics of the Faculty of Sciences of the University of Naples", ''Rendiconti of the Academy of Physical and Mathematical Sciences of Naples'' , 1978, pp. 7–44. * G. Gambini and L. Pepe, "Raccolta Montesano", Library of the Mathematical Institute of the University of Ferrara, Ferrara. * Commemoration of the partner Domenico Montesano, in Rendiconti of the Academy of physical and mathematical sciences of Naples, s. 3, XXV (1931)

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Montesano, Domenico 1930 deaths 1863 births Recipients of the Order of Saints Maurice and Lazarus 20th-century Italian mathematicians 19th-century Italian mathematicians