Salvatore Pincherle

Who was Salvatore Pincherle?

Salvatore Pincherle was an Italian mathematician. He contributed significantly to the field of functional analysis, established the Italian Mathematical Union, and was president of the Third International Congress of Mathematicians. The Pincherle derivative is named after him.

Pincherle was born into a Jewish family in Trieste and spent his childhood in Marseille, France. After completing his basic schooling in Marseille, he left in 1869 to study mathematics at the University of Pisa, where he was a student under both Enrico Betti and Ulisse Dini. After he graduated in 1874, he taught at a school in Pavia until he received a scholarship in 1877.

After winning the scholarship and studying abroad at the University of Berlin, Pincherle met Karl Weierstrass. Pincherle contributed to Weierstrass' theory of analytic functions, and in 1880, influenced by Weierstrass, he wrote an expository paper in the Giornale di Matematiche, which proved to be a significant paper in the field of analysis. Throughout his life, Pincherle's work greatly reflected the influence that Weierstrass had on him.