Mario Pieri

Mario Pieri (22 June 1860 – 1 March 1913) was an Italian mathematician who is known for his work on foundations of geometry. Pieri was born in Lucca, Italy, the son of Pellegrino Pieri and Ermina Luporini. Pellegrino was a lawyer. Pieri began his higher education at University of Bologna where he drew the attention of Salvatore Pincherle. Obtaining a scholarship, Pieri transferred to Scuola Normale Superiore in Pisa. There he took his degree in 1884 and worked first at a technical secondary school in Pisa. When an opportunity arose at the military academy in Turin to teach projective geometry, Pieri moved there and, by 1888, he was also an assistant instructor in the same subject at the University of Turin. By 1891, he had become libero docente at the university, teaching elective courses. Pieri continued to teach in Turin until 1900 when, through competition, he was awarded the position of extraordinary professor at University of Catania on the island of Sicily. Von Staudt's Geometrie der Lage (1847) was a much admired text on projective geometry. In 1889 Pieri translated it as Geometria di Posizione, a publication that included a study of the life and work of von Staudt written by Corrado Segre, the initiator of the project. Pieri also came under the influence of Giuseppe Peano at Turin. He contributed to the Formulario mathematico, and Peano placed nine of Pieri's papers for publication with the Academy of Sciences of Turin between 1895 and 1912. They shared a passion for reducing geometric ideas to their logical form and expressing these ideas symbolically. In 1898 Pieri wrote I principii della geometria di posizione composti in un sistema logico-deduttivo. It progressively introduced independent axioms: based on nineteen sequentially independent axioms – each independent of the preceding ones – which are introduced one by one as they are needed in the development, thus allowing the reader to determine on which axioms a given theorem depends. Pieri was invited to address the International Congress of Philosophy in 1900 in Paris.