Gino Loria

Gino Benedetto Loria (19 May 1862, Mantua – 30 January 1954, Genoa) was a Jewish-Italian[1] mathematician and historian of mathematics.

Photograph of Gino Loria

Portrait of Gino Loria in pencil on paper

Loria studied mathematics in Mantua, Turin, and Pavia and received his doctorate in 1883 from the University of Turin under the direction of Enrico D'Ovidio. For several years he was D'Ovidio's assistant in Turin. Starting in 1886 he became, as a result of winning a then-customary competition, Professor for Algebra and Analytic Geometry at the University of Genoa, where he stayed for the remainder of his career.

Loria did research on projective geometry, special curves and rational transformations in algebraic geometry, and elliptic functions. At the International Congress of Mathematicians he was an invited speaker in 1897 in Zürich, 1904 in Heidelberg,[2][3] in 1908 in Rome, in 1912 in Cambridge, UK, in 1924 in Toronto, in 1928 in Bologna, and in 1932 in Zürich.[4]

In 1897 he became editor of Bolletino di Bibliografia e Storia delle Science Matematiche. In 1916 he published a guide to the study of history of mathematics.[5] A reviewer noted

The amount of information given is really remarkable, and it is well up to date; the author, too, has not shrunk from the disagreeable duty of pointing out works ... which must be used with caution.[6]

Loria wrote a history of mathematics and was especially concerned with the history of mathematics in Italy and among the ancient Greeks.

After the German seized control of Italy in World War II, Waldensians helped Loria (endangered as a Jew) hide in Torre Pellice. Loria was elected to the Accademia dei Lincei and the Turin Academy of Sciences. An asteroid (27056 Ginoloria) is named after him.