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Biography Mathematician Barnaba Tortolini

Hidden deep in the warrens of the ancient and great metropolis of Roma is a street named “Via Barnaba Tortolini” in honor of a forgotten man. This is his story.

Barnaba Tortolini (1808-1874) was a nineteenth century Italian mathematician who played an early active role in advancing the scientific unification of the Italian states. He founded the first Italian scientific journal with an international presence, was a Roman priest and a distinguished professor of mathematics at the University of Roma for thirty years. As a mathematics researcher, he had more than one hundred mathematical papers to his credit in Italian, French, and German journals..

The Early Years

Tortolini was born on 19 November, 1808, in Roma and studied literature and philosophy at the Universita Gregoriana del Collegio Romano under P. Andrea Caraffa (1789-1845) who was a mathematical physicist. He continued his mathematical and philosophic studies at the Archiginnasio Romano della Sapienza in Roma where he obtained the degree of laurea as honorem in 1829. Subsequently he attended the course for engineers before studying theology at the Pontificio Seminario Romano and took holy orders in 1832. Tortolini led with M. Michele Ambrosini the Basilica di Santa Maria ad Martyres from 1860 and then alone after the latter’s death in 1866. M. Edoardo Borromeo Arese Maggiordomo di Sua Santita enabled Tortolini to join the “Camerieri d’onore in abito paonazzo di Sua Santita,” a religious order, in 1861.

As his biography shows, Tortolini had a foot in both the religious and scientific worlds. As a prelate, he was an important figure in the Papal State. Yet, his own correspondences with Enrico Betti show his concern as an editor and mathematician with careful attention to detail, concern for content and awareness of the latest foreign developments.

His Teaching Career

In February, 1835, Tortolini began his career as professor of mathematical physics at the Collegio Urbano di Propaganda Fide, a papal holy congregation directed to the government of the worldwide Catholic missions. The Collegio was founded by Spanish Bishop Vives in 1605 with buildings erected by Pope Urban VIII in 1627. It became a Holy Congregation in 1641.

A year later, in 1836, Tortolini was appointed to the chair of mechanics and hydraulics at the University of Roma where, in 1837, he obtained by competition the professorship of introductory higher calculus. Following in the same year, he was also appointed professor of differential and integral calculus. At the Pontificio Seminario Romano, he assumed the professorship of mathematical physics in 1846 and began directing the publication of Propaganda Fide, founded in 1626. This editorship he pursued from 1846 to 1865.

Professionally, his interests in research ranged from definite and elliptic integrals, calculus of residues, and applications of various differential equations. He was quoted in the works of Augustin Louis Cauchy, George Boole, Joseph Liouville, and Betti. He was honored with membership in the most eminent Italian societies and became a foreign minister of the Swedish Academy of Sciences in Uppsala. As a teacher, he was applauded for over thirty years at the University of Roma. He devoted his life to raising the standards of scientific education on the peninsula at a time when Italy as a newly formed European power in 1860 needed a cultural presence on par with France, Germany, and England.

The Founding of the Annali

Although he was a productive mathematician and devoted teacher, Tortolini is mainly remembered for his role in founding and publishing the first Italian international scientific journal, the Annali di scienze matematiche e fisiche, from 1850 to 1857. These periodicals gathered and diffused the work of the most notable and productive scholars of the exact sciences in order to revive a love for higher studies in Italy and to represent with dignity the scientific activity of the peninsula before other nations.

By publishing his own research abroad, he underscored his belief in the importance of the internationalization of mathematical results and made contact with differing cultures reflecting the views and standards of rigor promoted by foreign editors. During his tenure, the journal’s content skewed progressively more towards pure mathematics and away from application and topics in other sciences. Among the foreign authors who published in his journal were Arthur Cayley, Carl Gustav Jakob Jacobi, J. J. Sylvester and the Irishman William Roberts. Betti pioneered work in Galois theory of irreducible equations of prime degree at the encouragement of Tortolini.

In 1858, the journal was restructured to include an editorial board composed of Tortolini, Betti, Luigi Cremona, Francesco Brioschi and Angelo Genocchi. This was the last year of the Annali’s publication as broader geopolitical trends called for a more focused new journal of pure mathematics to witness the opening stages of what would become the unification of Italy by 1861. This was one of the reasons why Brioschi and Cremona later moved the Annali to Milano in 1867. The journal which replaced the former Annali became the Annali di matematica pura ed applicata and it's first series reigned from 1858 to 1865 but published in Roma. The numerical parity between foreign and Italian contributors became equal. The Editorial Board members contributed their own papers vigorously. Betti even started the publication of a translation of Riemann’s inaugural dissertation.

The Reformation of the Annali

After a hiatus in 1866, Cremona and Brioschi proposed to stop publication of the journal due to Tortolini’s "mishandling" -- according to their opinion. The political process of unification was very long and painful and the role played by the Church was not exactly pointing toward unification. The Annali finally moved to Milano in 1867 to distance itself from the Papal State. Cremona and Brioschi called for another new journal series enlisting the collaboration of Europe’s leading mathematicians. Tortolini once again graciously went along. The second series ran from July of 1867 to May of 1868 but that was only the first volume. The second series lasted way longer. The new Annali saw contributions from Alfred Clebsch, Elwin Christoffel, Paul Gordan, Camille Jordan, Cayley, Charles Hermite, Rudolf Sturm, Carl Neumann, Hermann Schwarz and Georg Friedrich Bernard Riemann. Pari pasu, Tortolini’s influence over the content of the second series ebbed. At the end of the century, the new journal had become one of Europe’s premiere mathematical journals. This new Annali enjoys continuity into the present day.

L'envoi

In the early years, in his role as sole editor of the Annali, Tortolini corresponded with all the major scientists of his day. Aside from Betti, Tortolini was one of the few Italian contemporaries to tap into foreign journals and by doing so established a rapport with the finest minds of his time including Karl Friedrick Gauss, Joseph Louis Lagrange, Cauchy, Riemann, Luigi Bianchi, Tullio Levi-Civita, Charles Hermite, Niels Abel, Lejeune Dirichlet, Sir William Thomson, August de Morgan, J. J. Sylvester, Gabriel Lame', and Eugenio Beltrami. His contributions to mathematical research -- over one hundred papers -- have yet to be assessed on their own merits.

On 20 September, 1870, after refusing to sign a loyalty oath to the King of Italy upon invasion and occupation of Roma by the Italian troops led by Raffaele Cadorna, Tortolini lost the chair of calculus at Roma. A year earlier he had become paralyzed and was ultimately forced to retire his various positions. He died in Ariccia, Roma, on 24 August, 1874.

Footnotes

1. For a list of Tortolini’s mathematical works, see Vincenzo Diorio, “Interno alla vita e ai lavori di Monsignore D. Barnaba Tortolini,” Atti della Accademia Pontificia dei Nuovi Lincei, 28 (1874), pp. 93-106 on pp. 100-106.

References

Laura Martini, "The Politics of Unification: Barnaba Tortolini and the Publication of Research Mathematics in Italy, 1850-1865," in Il sogno di Galois: Scritti di storia della matematica dedicati a Laura Toti Rigatelli per il suo 60º compleanno. A cura di R. Franci, P. Pagli e A. Simi (Siena: Centro Studi della Matematica Medioevale, Università di Siena, 2003): 171-198.
Laura Martini, “The Politics of Unification: Barnaba Tortolini and the Publication of Research Mathematics in Italy, 1850-1865”, Centro Studi della Matematica Medioevale, University of Siena, 2003.
Laura Martini, Political and Mathematical Unification: Algebraic Research in Italy, 1850-1914, Ph.D. Dissertation, University of Virginia, May 2006.
“Commemorazione di Barnaba Tortolini (1808-1874)”,Annali di matematica pura ed applicata, ser. 2, 7 (May 1875-October 1876), pp. 63-64.