Peano

1. Front Matter

   Pages i-xii

   PDF

2. Childhood

   • Hubert C. Kennedy

   Pages 1-2

3. Student Years

   • Hubert C. Kennedy

   Pages 3-6

4. University Assistant

   • Hubert C. Kennedy

   Pages 7-19

5. Making a Career

   • Hubert C. Kennedy

   Pages 20-34

6. Extraordinary Professor

   • Hubert C. Kennedy

   Pages 35-43

7. The Formulario Project

   • Hubert C. Kennedy

   Pages 44-50

8. Ordinary Professor

   • Hubert C. Kennedy

   Pages 51-55

9. The Controversy with Volterra

   • Hubert C. Kennedy

   Pages 56-63

10. The First International Congress of Mathematicians

    • Hubert C. Kennedy

    Pages 64-72

11. Contact with Frege

    • Hubert C. Kennedy

    Pages 73-77

12. Peano Acquires a Printing Press

    • Hubert C. Kennedy

    Pages 78-83

13. The School of Peano

    • Hubert C. Kennedy

    Pages 84-90

14. Paris, 1900

    • Hubert C. Kennedy

    Pages 91-99

15. The Decline Begins

    • Hubert C. Kennedy

    Pages 100-106

16. Latino Sine Flexione

    • Hubert C. Kennedy

    Pages 107-113

17. The Cotton Workers’ Strike

    • Hubert C. Kennedy

    Pages 114-117

18. Completion of the Formulario

    • Hubert C. Kennedy

    Pages 118-124

19. Academia Pro Interlingua

    • Hubert C. Kennedy

    Pages 125-135

20. Apostle of Interlingua

    • Hubert C. Kennedy

    Pages 136-143

All students of mathematics know of Peano's postulates for the natural numbers and his famous space-filling curve, yet their knowledge often stops there. Part of the reason is that there has not until now been a full-scale study of his life and works. This must surely be surprising, when one realizes the length of his academic career (over 50 years) and the extent of his publica­ tions (over 200) in a wide variety of fields, many of which had immediate and long-term effects on the development of modern mathematics. A study of his life seems long overdue. It appeared to me that the most likely person to write a biography of Peano would be his devoted disciple Ugo Cassina, with whom I studied at the University of Milan in 1957-58. I wrote to Professor Cassina on 29 October, 1963, inquiring if he planned to write the biography, and I offered him my assistance, since I hoped to return to Italy for a year. He replied on 28 November, 1963, suggesting that we collaborate, meaning by this thatI would write the biography, in English, using his material and advice. I gladly agreed to this suggestion, but work on the project had hardly begun when Professor Cassina died unexpectedly on 5 October, 1964. I then decided to continue the project on my own. I spent the academic year 1966-67 in Turin; completion of the book took ten years.

• DEX
• Gottlob Frege
• Natural
• Project
• Volterra
• development
• form
• knowledge
• mathematics
• university

• Department of Mathematics, Providence College, Providence, USA

  Hubert C. Kennedy

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