Ricci-Curbastro

Georgorio Ricci-Curbastro

Born: 16 Feb 1853 in Lugo, Papal States (now Italy)
Died: 6 Aug 1925 in Bologna, Italy

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Ricci-Curbastro attended lectures by Klein and Brill and became Dini's assistant. From 1880 to 1925 he was professor at the University of Padua. His early work was in mathematical physics, particularly on the laws of electric circuits and differential equations.

He became a differential geometer and was the inventor of the absolute differential calculus between 1884 and 1894, work which generalised that of Gauss. It became the foundation of tensor analysis and was used by Einstein in his theory of general relativity. Much of his work after 1900 was done jointly with his student Levi-Civita. In a fundamental joint paper that year he used (for the only time) the name Ricci instead of his full name. This paper had been requested five years earlier by Klein.

References elsewhere in this archive:

Tell me about Ricci's part in the development of General relativity and Quantum Mechanics

References:

  1. Dictionary of Scientific Biography
  2. Biography in Encyclopaedia Britannica
  3. T Levi-Civita, Commemorazione Georgorio Ricci-Curbastro, Atti dell'Accademia nazionale dei Lincei. 1 (1926), 555-567. 
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