page_title: Francesco Severi
hierarchical_section_title: Francesco Severi
caption_attribution_description: English: Francesco Severi (13 April 1879 – 8 December 1961), Italian mathematician.
context_page_description: Francesco Severi was an Italian mathematician.
  Severi was born in Arezzo, Italy. He is famous for his contributions to algebraic geometry and the theory of functions of several complex variables. He became the effective leader of the Italian school of algebraic geometry. Together with Federigo Enriques, he won the Bordin prize from the French Academy of Sciences.
  He contributed in a major way to birational geometry, the theory of algebraic surfaces, in particular of the curves lying on them, the theory of moduli spaces and the theory of functions of several complex variables. He wrote prolifically, and some of his work has subsequently been shown to be not rigorous according to the then new standards set in particular by Oscar Zariski and David Mumford. Although many of his arguments have since been made rigorous, a significant fraction were not only lacking in rigor but also wrong. At the personal level, according to Roth he was easily offended, and he was involved in a number of controversies.
context_section_description: Francesco Severi (13 April 1879 – 8 December 1961) was an Italian mathematician.
  Severi was born in Arezzo, Italy. He is famous for his contributions to algebraic geometry and the theory of functions of several complex variables. He became the effective leader of the Italian school of algebraic geometry. Together with Federigo Enriques, he won the Bordin prize from the French Academy of Sciences.
  He contributed in a major way to birational geometry, the theory of algebraic surfaces, in particular of the curves lying on them, the theory of moduli spaces and the theory of functions of several complex variables. He wrote prolifically, and some of his work (following the intuitionist approach of Federigo Enriques) has subsequently been shown to be not rigorous according to the then new standards set in particular by Oscar Zariski and David Mumford. Although many of his arguments have since been made rigorous, a significant fraction were not only lacking in rigor but also wrong (in contrast to the work of Enriques, which though not rigorous was almost entirely correct). At the personal level, according to Roth (1963) he was easily offended, and he was involved in a number of controversies. Most notably, he was a staunch supporter of the Italian fascist regime of Benito Mussolini and was included on a committee of academics that was to conduct an anti-semitic purge of all scholarly societies and academic institutions.  He died in Rome of cancer.
caption: Francesco Severi (photo by Konrad Jacobs)
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