Gabriel Oltramare

Gabriel Oltramare
Oltramare in 1885
Born(1816-07-19)19 July 1816
Geneva, Canton of Geneva, Switzerland
Died10 April 1906(1906-04-10) (aged 89)
Les Eaux-Vives, Canton of Geneva, Switzerland
Alma materSorbonne
Known forEssai sur le Calcul de Généralisation
Scientific career
Fields
InstitutionsUniversity of Geneva

Gabriel Oltramare (19 July 1816 – 10 April 1906) was a Swiss mathematician, known for his book Essai sur le Calcul de Généralisation.[1][2][3]

Biography

Oltramare was born in Geneva on 19 July 1816, the son of cousins Anne Oltramare and Louis-David-Benjamin Oltramare, a watchcase maker.[1] He belonged to a prominent family of Italian Protestant origin that settled in Geneva in the 16th century.[4] Oltramare studied mathematics and natural sciences in Geneva from 1836 to 1839, then studied higher mathematics at the Sorbonne, graduating with a licence ès sciences mathématiques in 1840.[1] He was a teacher in Aarau.[5] From 1843 to 1844, Oltramare worked in Egypt as a tutor for Isma'il, son of Ibrahim Pasha of the Muhammad Ali dynasty. He was privat-docent of mechanics at Geneva's industrial school from 1845 to 1870, as well as professor of mathematics at the Collège de Genève from 1848 to 1850. In 1848, Oltramare was appointed professor ordinarius of higher mathematics at the Academy of Geneva.[1]

At the beginning of his career he did research on number theory, on which he published several works;[1] according to Henri Fehr, the most important of these is the 1855 Note sur les relations qui existent entre les formes linéaires et les formes quadratiques des numbers premiers.[6][7] Later in his career Oltramare worked on mathematical analysis. In 1893 he published his treatise Essai sur le calcul de généralisation, with 2nd edition in 1899 and a Russian translation in 1895. He published several articles on astronomy and meteorology in scientific journals. He was one of the founders in 1853 of the Institut national genevois and presided from 1894 to 1902 over its section of natural sciences. He was a member in 1848 of the Conseil administratif de Genève and member from 1848 to 1854 of the Grand Council of Geneva, over which he presided several times.[1] He was one of the organizers of the first International Congress of Mathematicians, which was held in Geneva in 1897.[8]

References

  1. ^ a b c d e f Martin Kurz: Gabriel Oltramare in German, French and Italian in the online Historical Dictionary of Switzerland, 3 November 2009.
  2. ^ Lovett, E. O. (December 1899). "Review of Calcul de Généralisation par G. Oltramare". Bulletin of the New York Mathematical Society. 6: 109–113. doi:10.1090/S0002-9904-1899-00684-0.
  3. ^ Oltramare, G. (1899). Calcul de généralisation. Paris: A. Hermann.
  4. ^ Marie Bron: Oltramare in German, French and Italian in the online Historical Dictionary of Switzerland, 2 December 2010.
  5. ^ Bölling, Reinhard, ed. (1994). A photo album for Weierstrass. Springer-Verlag. p. 31. ISBN 9783528066024.
  6. ^ Fehr, Henri (1906). "Gabriel Oltramare. 1816–1906" (PDF). Actes de la Société Helvétique des Sciences. 89.
  7. ^ Oltramare, Gabriel (1855). "Note sur les relations qui existent entre les formes linéaires et les formes quadratiques des numbers premiers". Journal für die reine und angewandte Mathematik. 49: 151–160. European Digital Mathematics Library eudml.org record
  8. ^ Rudio, F., ed. (1898). Verhandlungen des ersten Internationalen Kongresses in Zürich vom 9. bis 11. August 1897. BG Teubner. p. 6.