Antonio Signorini
Antonio Signorini (2 April 1888 – 23 February 1963) was an influential Italian mathematical physicist and civil engineer of the 20th century. He is known for his work in finite elasticity, thermoelasticity and for formulating the Signorini problem. Life. Honors. He was awarded the gold medal of the Accademia Nazionale delle Scienze detta dei XL in 1920, while he was working at the University of Palermo: the members of the judging commission were Luigi Bianchi, Guido Castelnuovo and Tullio Levi-Civita. In 1924, on the 8th of June, he was elected ordinary non resident member of the mathematics division  of the Accademia Pontaniana. On the 30th of May 1931 he was elected corresponding member of the Società Nazionale di Scienze, Lettere e Arti in Napoli: later on, precisely on the 11th of February 1933 and on the 4th of June 1949 he was elected, respectively, ordinary member and ordinary non resident member of the same academy. He was elected corresponding member of the Accademia Nazionale dei Lincei on July 15, 1935, and then national member on February 4, 1947. However, he was never awarded the royal prize of this academy, because he became a very early a member of  it, thus losing the right to win a prize. Work. Research activity. His scientific production includes more than 114 works, being papers, monographs and textbooks, 17 of which have been collected in his "Opere Scelte" (Selected works). Teaching activity. Among his "allievi" there are some of the most important Italian mathematicians and mathematical physicists; a partial list of them is below: He was also a close friend and teacher of Gaetano Fichera at the Istituto Nazionale di Alta Matematica, inspiring his research in continuum mechanics, his solution of the Signorini problem and the creation of the field of variational inequalities