Pasquale del Pezzo

Who was Pasquale del Pezzo?

Pasquale del Pezzo, Duke of Cajanello and Marquis of Campodisola, was a Neapolitan mathematician.

He was born in Berlin on 2 May 1859. He died in Naples on 20 June 1936. His wife was the Swedish writer Anne Charlotte Leffler, sister of the great mathematician Gösta Mittag-Leffler.

At the University of Naples, he received first a law degree in 1880 and then in 1882 a math degree. He became a pre-eminent professor at that university, teaching projective geometry, and remained at that University, as rector, faculty president, etc.

He was mayor of Naples from 1913 till 1917. Starting in 1919 he became a Senator of the Kingdom of Italy until his death.

He is remembered particularly for first describing what became known as a del Pezzo surface.