Vito Volterra (nonfiction)

Vito Volterra (circa 1910).

Vito Volterra (3 May 1860 – 11 October 1940) was an Italian mathematician and physicist, known for his contributions to mathematical biology and integral equations, being one of the founders of functional analysis.

Volterra attending the University of Pisa, where he fell under the influence of Enrico Betti, and where he became professor of rational mechanics in 1883. He immediately started work developing his theory of functionals which led to his interest and later contributions in integral and integro-differential equations. His work is summarized in his book Theory of functionals and of Integral and Integro-Differential Equations (1930).

In 1892, he became professor of mechanics at the University of Turin and then, in 1900, professor of mathematical physics at the University of Rome La Sapienza. Volterra had grown up during the final stages of the Risorgimento when the Papal States were finally annexed by Italy and, like his mentor Betti, he was an enthusiastic patriot, being named by the king Victor Emmanuel III as a senator of the Kingdom of Italy in 1905.

In 1905 he began to develop the theory of dislocations in crystals that was later to become important in the understanding of the behavior of ductile materials.

On the outbreak of World War I, already well into his 50s, he joined the Italian Army and worked on the development of airships under Giulio Douhet. He originated the idea of using inert helium rather than flammable hydrogen and made use of his leadership abilities in organizing its manufacture.

After World War I, Volterra turned his attention to the application of his mathematical ideas to biology, principally reiterating and developing the work of Pierre François Verhulst. An outcome of this period is the Lotka–Volterra equations.

Fiction cross-reference

• Crimes against mathematical constants
• Gnomon algorithm
• Mathematics

Nonfiction cross-reference

• Airship (nonfiction)
• G. I. Taylor (nonfiction)

External links:

• Vito Volterra @ Wikipedia