Guido Fubini (1879-1943)   Historical Sketch

Guido Fubini was born in Venice, Italy in 1879, and he was urged toward mathematics by his father, a teacher in a mechanics school. At age 19, he enrolled in the Scuola Normale Superiore in Pisa, where he obtained his mathematics doctorate in 1900, when he was but 21, reflecting his mathematical brilliance. His thesis was in geometry, and it was published in 1902.

Fubini's teaching career developed rapidly, teaching first at the University of Catania in Sicily and a bit later at the University of Genoa before going to the University of Turin in 1908. During the first World War, he became engaged in military investigations that led him to doing some applied mathematics and mathematical physics.

When events were unfolding that led to World War II, Fubini had to consider what was best for his family, a wife and two engineer sons, so when the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, N. J., offered him a position, he accepted and emigrated to the United States in 1939.

His researches led him to many areas of mathematics, but his most important work centered on what was called absolute differential calculus, now known as tensor analysis, which is a method of studying quantities that depend linearly on vectors as variables. And you know him of course by what is called Fubini's theorem.

Already in poor health when he left Italy, he died after about four years in America.