Historically Speaking— Giuseppe Peano at the University of Turin

Abstract

Giuseppe Peano visited America only once, as a delegate to the International Mathematical Congress of 1924 in Toronto. A group photograph was made and published in the Proceedings. Peano is near the center of the last row, a balding man with gray hair and beard. His vest is buttoned, but his coat is not, and his tie is skewed to his left. He was the official delegate of the University of Turin, the Academy of Sciences of Turin, and the Academia pro Interlingua. At the Congress Peano gave a paper entitled “De Aequalitate,” which appear as two pages of the Proceedings in the section containing abstracts. However, it is probably the complete paper. One wonders what impression Peano made on the younger delegates at the congress. Here was a man who had emerged in the last decades of the nineteenth century as an acute mathematician and logician, now reading a distressingly simple paper in a strange language (his own invention!), speaking with a gruff voice that must have contrasted sharply with his childish-sounding pronunciation. (He was unable to say the letter “r” and said “I” in its place.)