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, an award given at the ICM in Rome (1908), for his contribution to the theory of algebraic curves.

Created in 1904, the medal honored the Italian mathematician Giovanni Guccia. The jury, composed of Max Noether, Henri Poincaré, and Corrado Segre, decided that the first winner would be Severi. They just didn't know it would only be awarded once.

Francesco Severi had a long academic career, with stints at the Universities of Bologna, Pisa, and Rome. He was one of the founders of the National Institute of Higher Mathematics in Rome and a member of the Accademia d'Italia.

Famous for his contributions to algebraic geometry, Severi won numerous awards, such as the Gold Medal of the National Academy of Sciences dp XL (1906) and the Prix Bordin from the Paris Academy of Sciences.

A staunch defender of Benito Mussolini's fascist regime, he was part of a committee of academics willing to expel Jews from all academic societies and institutions in Italy. In his autobiography — "From Science to Faith" (1959) — he made a mea culpa and acknowledged that mathematics does not mix with politics: "mathematics is the art of giving the same name to different things: mathematicians, therefore, are wrong when they deal with politics, since politics is instead the art of giving different names to the same things."

He published over 400 scientific papers and treatises throughout his career. At age 53, he delivered the plenary lecture “La théorie générale des fonctions analytiques de plusieurs variables et la géométrie algébrique” at the 1932 ICM in Zurich, Switzerland. He died at age 82 in Rome, a victim of cancer.