Giusto Bellavitis (22 November 1803 – 6 November 1880) was an Italian
mathematician
A mathematician is someone who uses an extensive knowledge of mathematics in their work, typically to solve mathematical problems.
Mathematicians are concerned with numbers, data, quantity, structure, space, models, and change.
History
On ...
,
senator, and
municipal councilor.
[ Charles Laisant (1880) "Giusto Bellavitis. Nécrologie", ''Bulletin des sciences mathématiques et astronomiques'', 2nd série, 4(1): 343–8]
According to
Charles Laisant,
:His principle achievement, which marks his place, in the future and the present, among the names of geometers that will endure, is the invention of the method of
equipollences, a new method of
analytic geometry that is both philosophical and fruitful.
[
Born in ]Bassano del Grappa
Bassano del Grappa ( vec, Basan or ''Bassan'', ) is a city and ''comune'', in the Vicenza province, in the region of Veneto, in northern Italy. It bounds the communes of Cassola, Marostica, Solagna, Pove del Grappa, Romano d'Ezzelino, Campolongo ...
in 1803 to Ernesto Bellavitis and Giovanna Navarini, Giusto studied largely alone. In 1840 he entered Institut Venitian and in 1842 began instructing at Lycee de Vicence. In 1845 he became professor of descriptive geometry at University of Padua
The University of Padua ( it, Università degli Studi di Padova, UNIPD) is an Italian university located in the city of Padua, region of Veneto, northern Italy. The University of Padua was founded in 1222 by a group of students and teachers from ...
. With the unification of Italy
The unification of Italy ( it, Unità d'Italia ), also known as the ''Risorgimento'' (, ; ), was the 19th-century political and social movement that resulted in the consolidation of different states of the Italian Peninsula into a single ...
he took the opportunity to revise the curriculum to include complementary algebra and analytic geometry. Bellavitis married in 1842 and had one son who also taught geometry at the University of Padua.[
Bellavitis anticipated the idea of a ]Euclidean vector
In mathematics, physics, and engineering, a Euclidean vector or simply a vector (sometimes called a geometric vector or spatial vector) is a geometric object that has magnitude (or length) and direction. Vectors can be added to other vectors ...
with his notion of equipollence. Two line segments ''AB'' and ''CD'' are equipollent if they are parallel and have the same length and direction. The relation is denoted In modern terminology, this relation between line segments is an example of an equivalence relation. The concept of vector addition
In mathematics, physics, and engineering, a Euclidean vector or simply a vector (sometimes called a geometric vector or spatial vector) is a geometric object that has magnitude (or length) and direction. Vectors can be added to other vectors a ...
was written by Bellavitis as
:
According to Laissant, Bellavitis published works in "arithmetic, algebra, geometry, infinitesimal calculus, probability, mechanics, physics, astronomy, chemistry, mineralogy, geodesy, geography, telegraphy, social science, philosophy, and literature."[
]
Works
* 1847: via Biblioteca europea di informazione e cultura
* 1852
Saggio sull'algebra degli immaginari
link from HathiTrust
* 1854
Sposizione del Metodo della Equipollenze
link from Google Books
Google Books (previously known as Google Book Search, Google Print, and by its code-name Project Ocean) is a service from Google Inc. that searches the full text of books and magazines that Google has scanned, converted to text using optical ...
.
* 1858
Calcolo dei Quaternioni di W.R. Hamilton e sua Relazione col Metodo delle Equipollenze
link from HathiTrust.
* 1868
Lezioni di Geometria Descrittiva, 2nd edition
link from HathiTrust
*
Awards
* Fellow of the Istituto Veneto in 1840
* Fellow of the Società Italiana dei Quaranta in 1850
* Member of the Accademia dei Lincei in 1879
References
* Michael J. Crowe (1967) A History of Vector Analysis, "Giusto Bellavitis and His Calculus of Equipollences", pp 52–4, University of Notre Dame Press
The University of Notre Dame Press is a university press that is part of the University of Notre Dame in Notre Dame, Indiana, United States. The press was founded in 1949, and is the largest Catholic university
Catholic higher education i ...
.
* Charles-Ange Laisant (1887
Theorie et Applications des Equipollence
Gauthier-Villars, link from University of Michigan
, mottoeng = "Arts, Knowledge, Truth"
, former_names = Catholepistemiad, or University of Michigania (1817–1821)
, budget = $10.3 billion (2021)
, endowment = $17 billion (2021)As o ...
Historical Math Collection.
* Lena L. Severance (1930
The Theory of Equipollences; Method of Analytical Geometry of Sig. Bellavitis
link from HathiTrust.
*
{{DEFAULTSORT:Bellavitis, Giusto
1803 births
1880 deaths
19th-century Italian mathematicians
Algebraic geometers
People from Bassano del Grappa