Fano

Gino Fano

Born: 5 Jan 1871 in Mantua, Italy
 Died: 8 Nov 1952 in Verona, Italy

[Mathematiker Bild]

Show birthplace location

Previous (Chronologically) Next Biographies Index
Previous (Alphabetically) Next Welcome page

Gino Fano studied at Turin under Corrado Segre and met Castelnuovo there. Then he went to Göttingen where he met Klein. Fano became Castelnuovo's assistant, then was professor at Turin until he was deprived of his chair by the Fascist Regime in 1938. Fano then went to Switzerland and, after 1946, he taught in the USA and Italy.

His work was mainly on projective and algebraic geometry. Fano was a pioneer in finite geometry and one of the first people to try to set geometry on an abstract footing. Before Hilbert was to make such abstract statements Fano said

As basis for our study we assume an arbitrary collection of entities of an arbitrary nature, entities which, for brevity, we shall call points, and this quite independently of their nature.

References (6 books/articles)

Previous (Chronologically) Next Biographies Index
Previous (Alphabetically) Next Welcome page
History Topics Index Famous curves index
Chronologies Birthplace Maps
Mathematicians of the day Anniversaries for the year
Search Form Simple Search Form Search Suggestions
JOC/EFR December 1996