Italian Mathematicians and the First World War: Intellectual Debates and Institutional Innovations

Résumé En

Historical studies about the involvement of Italian scientists—and mathematicians in particular—in World War I are very few. We use several published and unpublished letters, reports, and documents in order to give a picture (although incomplete) of Italian mathematicians' role in the Great War. In the period from August 1914 to May 1915, before Italy entered the war, mathematicians partook to debates concerning intervention and expressed a full range of different opinions. During the war Italian scientists were generally involved in the war as " citizens " defending their country. Vito Volterra and Mauro Picone are two exceptions. They were strongly involved at both scientific and institutional levels: Volterra founded the Office for Inventions and Research (Ufficio Invenzioni e Ricerche, UIR) and Picone created a computing bureau for ballistics attached to the Sixth Army. Their war work was fundamental for the development of closer links among scientific research, industry , and society, and led them to found two long–lasting institutions in the postwar period, the National Research Council (Consiglio Nazionale delle Ricerche, CNR) and the Institute for the Application of Computing (Istituto per le Applicazioni del Calcolo, IAC).