ESHS/HSS Annual Meeting

Ettore Bortolotti, or the History of Mathematics from a Nationalistic Perspective

• In Event: Shifting Perspectives in Historiography of Science under the Fascist Rule 1

English Abstract

Ettore Bortolotti, one of the most prolific Italian historians of mathematics in the first half of the 20th century, repeatedly stated that his research aimed to claim the primacy of Italian mathematics in certain crucial periods in the history of the discipline: classical geometry, the restoration of Greek science, and the emergence of modern mathematics.
Bortolotti's approach was openly nationalistic and a paradigmatic example of the idea of the history of mathematics as a series of isolated discoveries made by brilliant geniuses. According to Bortolotti, the historian's task is to identify and highlight these discoveries that “precurse” future developments, and to attribute them to their rightful inventors (preferably Italian). Therefore, the historian must place primary sources at the center of their investigation, but they must not limit themselves to a neutral reading. Instead, they must actively engage with the texts and construct an interpretation to be transmitted to the scientific community. This paper focuses on one of the many examples from Bortolotti's work.
One of Bortolotti's greatest successes was discovering two manuscripts of Rafael Bombelli's L'Algebra (1572) in Bologna. One manuscript contains a text divided into five books, whereas the published edition ends with the announcement of the imminent publication of the last two books. In 1929, Bortolotti published these two additional books. The edition, reprinted in 1966, remains the only available today. The talk will also examine Bortolotti's editorial interventions in preparing the edition to assess their impact on the goal of restoring the "primacy of Italian mathematics".

Author

• Veronica Gavagna, University of Florence