author
Tullio Levi-Civita
1873–1941
A brilliant Italian mathematician, he helped build the tensor calculus that later became essential to Einstein’s general theory of relativity. His work ranged from pure geometry to mechanics, always shaped by a gift for seeing deep structure in difficult problems.
1 Audiobook
A simplified presentation of Einstein's unified field equations
by Tullio Levi-Civita
About the author
Born in Padua on March 29, 1873, Tullio Levi-Civita became one of the leading mathematicians of his era. He studied at the University of Padua under Gregorio Ricci-Curbastro and later worked with him to develop absolute differential calculus, now better known as tensor analysis.
That mathematical language proved enormously important in twentieth-century physics, especially in relativity. Levi-Civita also made major contributions to differential geometry, hydrodynamics, and celestial mechanics, and he taught at Padua before moving to the University of Rome.
His later years were darkened by Italy’s Fascist racial laws, which forced him from his academic position because he was Jewish. Even so, his ideas endured, and his name remains woven into modern mathematics and physics through concepts such as the Levi-Civita connection and the Levi-Civita symbol.