Umberto Bottazzini

Umberto Bottazzini (born 1947 in Viadana, Lombardy) is an Italian historian of mathematics, with an outstanding international reputation for his research on the history of mathematics and the foundations of mathematics.

Bottazzini graduated with the Laurea degree from the University of Milan. He was an associate professor of matematiche complementari (an Italian academic discipline involving the history of mathematics, foundations of mathematics, and mathematical didactics) from 1977 to 1979 at the University of Calabria and from 1979 to 1990 at the University of Bologna. From 1990 to 2004 he was a professor ordinarius in the department of mathematics and computer science at the University of Palermo. From 2002 to 2006 he was a lecturer in the history of science at Trieste's Scuola Internazionale Superiore di Studi Avanzati (SISSA), where he still maintains collaborative relations. From 2003 to 2004 he also taught at Milan's Vita-Salute San Raffaele University. Since 2004 he is a professor ordinarius of matematiche complementari at the University of Milan.

Bottazzini's research deals with the development of mathematical analysis in the 19th century, especially the work of Bernhard Riemann, Augustin-Louis Cauchy, and Karl Weierstrass. Bottazzini was the editor, with added commentary, for a new edition of Cauchy's Cours d'analyse; the new edition was published in Bologna in 1990 by CLUEB (Cooperativa Libraria Universitaria Editrice Bologna).

Awards and honors

• 1993 — Corresponding Member of the International Academy for the History of Sciences
• 2002 — Invited Speaker at the International Congress of Mathematicians (ICM) in Beijing
• 2012 — Fellow of the American Mathematical Society
• 2015 — Albert Leon Whiteman Memorial Prize

Selected publications

• The Higher Calculus. A History of Real and Complex Analysis from Euler to Weierstrass, Springer 1981, 1986; Italian original Il calcolo sublime, Boringhieri 1981
• Riposte armonie. Lettere di Federigo Enriques a Guido Castelnuovo, edited by Umberto Bottazzini, Alberto Conte & Paola Gario, Bollati Boringhieri Editore, Torino, 1996. (See Federigo Enriques & Guido Castelnuovo.)
• Poincaré, book series: "I grandi della scienza", Quaderni de "Le Scienze", Milano, 1999 (translated by Laurent Rollet into French, published 2000, Paris, Pour la Science (collection Les Génies de la Science, Num. 4); translated by Jan Willem Nienhuys into Dutch 2013). (See Henri Poincaré.)
• Die Theorie der komplexen Funktionen 1780–1900, in: Hans Niels Jahnke (ed.): Geschichte der Analysis, Spektrum Verlag, 1999, pp. 267–328
• with Edoardo Boncinelli: La serva padrona. Fascino e potere della matematica, Mailand, Cortina 2000
• as editor with Amy Dalhan Dalmedico: Changing Images of Mathematics – From the French Revolution to the New Millennium, Rutledge 2001
• Guido Castelnuovo, Opere matematiche. Memorie e Note, edited by Edoardo Vesentini, Enrico Arbarello, Umberto Bottazzini, Maurizio Cornalba & Paola Gario, vol. I (2002), vol. II (2003), vol. III (2004), vol. IV (2007), Pubblicazioni a cura dell'Accademia Nazionale dei Lincei, Roma, 2002-2007.
• with Elena Anne Marchisotto & Patrizia Miller: Hilbert's Flute – the History of Modern Mathematics, Springer 2006, ISBN 0387986952, Italian original 2003
• with Jeremy Gray: Chapter 5 Riemann's Geometry Function Theory in Hidden Harmony – Geometric Fantasies. The rise of complex function theory, Springer 2013 doi:10.1007/978-1-4614-5725-1_6
• Numeri. Raccontare la matematica, Società editrice il Mulino, Bologna, 2015.