Eugenio Elia Levi
Born(1883-10-18)18 October 1883
Torino, Italy
Died28 October 1917(1917-10-28) (aged 34)
Cormons, Italy
NationalityItalian
Alma materScuola Normale Superiore
Known for
Awards
Scientific career
Fields
Institutions

Eugenio Elia Levi (18 October 1883 – 28 October 1917) was an Italian mathematician, known for his fundamental contributions in group theory, in the theory of partial differential operators and in the theory of functions of several complex variables. He was a younger brother of Beppo Levi and was killed in action during First World War.

Work

Research activity

He wrote 33 papers, classified by his colleague and friend Mauro Picone[lower-alpha 1] according to the scheme reproduced in this section.

Differential geometry

Group theory

He wrote only three papers in group theory: in the first one, Levi (1905) discovered what is now called Levi decomposition, which was conjectured by Wilhelm Killing and proved by Élie Cartan in a special case.

Function theory

In the theory of functions of several complex variables he introduced the concept of pseudoconvexity[lower-alpha 2] during his investigations on the domain of existence of such functions: it turned out to be one of the key concepts of the theory.

Cauchy and Goursat problems

Boundary value problems

His researches in the theory of partial differential operators lead to the method of the parametrix, which is basically a way to construct fundamental solutions for elliptic partial differential operators with variable coefficients: the parametrix is widely used in the theory of pseudodifferential operators.

Calculus of variations

Publications

The full scientific production of Eugenio Elia Levi is collected in reference (Levi 1959–1960).

See also

Notes

  1. This section is mainly based on the survey article by Picone (1959) included in Levi's "Opere (Collected works)", describing his researches briefly but comprehensively; occasionally, also the comments of Guido Fubini in (Fubini & Loria 1918) are taken into account.
  2. See the two well known papers (Levi 1910) and (Levi 1910): Levi deals with functions of two complex variables, but his calculations can be extended to functions with any finite number of variables, as he explicitly states. Levi, following a then well established practice, does not use Wirtinger derivatives.

References

    Biographical and general references


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