Francesco Paolo Cantelli

Who was Francesco Paolo Cantelli?

Francesco Paolo Cantelli was an Italian mathematician.

He received his doctorate in mathematics in 1899 from the University of Palermo with a thesis on celestial mechanics and continued his interest in astronomy by working until 1903 at Palermo's osservatorio astronomico cittadino, which was under the direction of Annibale Riccò. Cantelli's early papers were on problems in astronomy and celestial mechanics.

From 1903 to 1923 Cantelli worked at the Istituto di Previdenza della Cassa Depositi e Prestiti. During these years he did research on the mathematics of finance theory and actuarial science as well as the probability theory for which he became famous. Cantelli's later work was all on probability and it is in this field where his name graces the Borel–Cantelli lemma and the Glivenko–Cantelli theorem. In 1916-1917 he contributed to the theory of stochastic convergence. In 1923 he resigned his actuarial position when he was appointed professor of actuarial mathematics at the University of Catania. From there, he went to the University of Naples as a professor and then in 1931 to the Sapienza University of Rome where he remained until his retirement in 1951.