Cesare Burali-Forti

Cesare Burali-Forti (13 August 1861 – 21 January 1931) was an Italian mathematician, after whom the Burali-Forti paradox is named. He was a prolific writer, with 180 publications.^[1]

Cesare Burali-Forti
Born	13 August 1861 Arezzo
Died	21 January 1931 Turin
Known for	Burali-Forti paradox
Scientific career
Fields	Mathematics

Biography

Burali-Forti was born in Arezzo, and he obtained his degree from the University of Pisa in 1884.^[2] In 1886, after two years of middle-school service in Scicily, Burali-Forti won a competition to become professor of analytic and projective geometry at the military academy in Turin.^[3] He was an assistant of Giuseppe Peano in Turin from 1894 to 1896, during which time he discovered a theorem which Bertrand Russell later realised contradicted a previously proved result by Georg Cantor. The contradiction came to be known as the Burali-Forti paradox of Cantorian set theory. He died in Turin.

Books by C. Burali-Forti

• Analyse vectorielle générale: Applications à la mécanique et à la physique. with Roberto Marcolongo (Mattéi & co., Pavia, 1913).
• Corso di geometria analitico-proiettiva per gli allievi della R. Accademia Militare (G. B. Petrini di G. Gallizio, Torino, 1912).
• Geometria descrittiva (S. Lattes & c., Torino, 1921).
• Introduction à la géométrie différentielle, suivant la méthode de H. Grassmann (Gauthier-Villars, 1897).
• Lezioni Di Geometria Metrico-Proiettiva (Fratelli Bocca, Torino, 1904).
• Meccanica razionale with Tommaso Boggio (S. Lattes & c., Torino, 1921).
• Logica Matematica (Hoepli, Milano, 1894).
• Archived 2016-03-04 at the Wayback Machine Complete listing of publications and bibliography, 8 pages.

Bibliography

Primary literature in English translation:

• Jean van Heijenoort, 1967. A Source Book in Mathematical Logic, 1879-1931. Harvard Univ. Press.
  • 1897. "A question on transfinite numbers," 104-11.
  • 1897. "On well-ordered classes," 111-12.

Secondary literature:

• Ivor Grattan-Guinness, 2000. The Search for Mathematical Roots 1870-1940. Princeton Uni. Press.