Guido Castelnuovo

Guido Castelnuovo (14 August 1865, Venice – 27 April

Life

Early life

After attending a grammar school at Foscarini in Venice, he went to Padua where he graduated in 1886. At the University of Padua he was taught by Giuseppe Veronese. After his graduation, he sent one of his papers to Corrado Segre, whose replies he found remarkably helpful. It marked the beginning of a long period of collaboration.

Related Topics:
Foscarini - Padua - 1886 - University of Padua - Giuseppe Veronese - Corrado Segre

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Career

Castelnuovo spent one year in Rome to research advanced geometry. After that he was appointed as an assistant of Enrico D'Ovidio at the University of Turin, where he was strongly influenced by Corrado Segre. Here he worked with Alexander von Brill and Max Noether. In 1891 he moved back to Rome to work at the chair of Analytic and Projective Geometry. Here he was a colleague of Luigi Cremona, his former teacher, and took over his job when the latter died in 1903.

Related Topics:
Rome - Enrico D'Ovidio - University of Turin - Alexander von Brill - Max Noether - 1891 - Luigi Cremona - 1903

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Retirement and World War II

He retired from teaching in 1935. It was a period of great political difficulty in Italy. In 1925 Mussolini had risen to power and in 1938 a large number of anti-semitic laws were declared, which excluded him, like other Jews, from public work. With the rise of Nazism, he was forced into hiding. However, during World War II, he organised and taught secret courses for Jewish students — the latter were not allowed to attend university either.

Related Topics:
1935 - 1925 - Mussolini - 1938 - Anti-semitic - Law - Nazi - World War II

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Final years and death

After the liberation of Rome, Castelnuovo was appointed as a special commissioner of the Consiglio Nazionale delle Ricerche in June 1944. He was given the task to repair the damage done to Italian scientific institutions by the twenty years of Mussolini's rule. He became president of the Accademia dei Lincei until his death and was elected a member of the Académie des Sciences in Paris. On 5 December 1949, he became a senator of the Italian Republic.

Related Topics:
Consiglio Nazionale delle Ricerche - 1944 - Accademia dei Lincei - Académie des Sciences - 5 December - 1949 - Senator

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Castelnuovo died at the age of 86 on 27 April 1952 in Rome.

Related Topics:
27 April - 1952

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