23/02/2018

Francesco Severi (1879-1961): sole owner of Medaglia Guccia

A controversial but scientifically impressive figure, the mathematician Francesco Severi stands out in the history of the International Congress of Mathematicians for being the only one to win the Medaglia Guccia, for his contribution to the theory of algebraic curves. The Medaglia Guccia was awarded only at ICM Rome (1908) and had been created in 1904, to honor the Italian mathematician Giovanni Guccia.
The jury formed by Max Noether, Henri Poincaré and Corrado Segre decided that the first winner would be Severi. They just didn’t know it would be delivered only once.
Francesco Severi had a long academic career at the Universities of Bologna, Pisa and Rome, was one of the founders of the National Institute of Superior Mathematics of Rome and a member of the Accademia d’Italia.

Renowned for his contributions to algebraic geometry, Severi won numerous awards, including the Gold Medal of the National Academy of Sciences XL (1906) and the Prix Bordin of the Académie des Sciences, in Paris.
A firm supporter of the fascist regime of Benito Mussolini, he was part of a committee of scholars willing to expel Jews from all societies and academic institutions in Italy. In his autobiography, “From Science to Faith” (1959), he made his mea culpa and acknowledged that mathematics does not fit politics: “Mathematics is the art of giving the same name to different things: mathematicians are therefore wrong in dealing with politics, since politics is instead the art of giving different names to the same things. “
He published more than 400 scientific papers and treatises throughout his career. At the age of 53, he presented the plenary lecture “The théorie générale des fonctions analytiques de plusieurs variables et la géométrie algébrique” at ICM in 1932, in Zurich, Switzerland. He died at 82 in Rome, a victim of cancer.