Barnaba Tortolini (19 November 1808 – 24 August 1874) was a 19th-century Italian priest and mathematician who played an early active role in advancing the scientific unification of the Italian states. He founded the first Italian scientific journal with an international presence and was a distinguished professor of mathematics at the University of Rome for 30 years. As a mathematics researcher, he had more than one hundred mathematical papers to his credit in Italian, French, and German journals.
Early years
Tortolini was born on 19 November 1808, in Rome and studied literature and philosophy at the Pontifical Gregorian University, especially under Don Andrea Caraffa (1789–1845) who was a mathematical physicist. He continued his mathematical and philosophic studies at the Archiginnasio Romano della Sapienza in Roma where he obtained the degree of laurea ad honorem in 1829. Subsequently, he attended the course for engineers before studying theology at the Pontifical Roman Seminary and took holy orders in 1832. Don Tortolini, along with Don Michele Ambrosini, was put in charge of the Basilica of Santa Maria dei Martiri (Our Lady of the Martyrs) from 1860, and then alone after the latter's death in 1866. Edoardo Borromeo Arese, the Papal majordomo, enabled Tortolini to join the “Camerieri d’onore in abito paonazzo (Chamberlains of Honor of the Purple)" in 1861; this was a former honorary office of the Papal Court.
As his biography shows, Tortolini had a foot in both the religious and scientific worlds. As a priest and noted academic at major universities of the city, he was an official figure with stature in the Papal States. Yet his own correspondences with Enrico Betti show his concern as an editor and mathematician with careful attention to detail, concern for content and awareness of the latest foreign developments.
Teaching career
In February 1835, Tortolini began his career as professor of mathematical physics at the Pontifical Urban University, an institution run by the Pontifical Congregation for the Evangelization of Peoples (long called the "Propaganda"), directed to the promotion of the worldwide Catholic overseas missions. The College was founded by Pope Urban VIII in 1627. It came under the authority of the Congregation in 1641, and received the title "Pontifical" from Pope John XXIII in 1962.
A year later, in 1836, Tortolini was appointed to the chair of mechanics and hydraulics at the University of Rome where, in 1837, he obtained by competition the professorship of introductory higher calculus. Following in the same year, he was also appointed professor of differential and integral calculus. At the Pontifical Roman Seminary, his alma mater, he assumed the professorship of mathematical physics in 1846 and began directing the publication of Propaganda Fide, founded in 1626. This editorship he pursued from 1846 to 1865.
Professionally, his interests in research ranged from definite and elliptic integrals, calculus of residues, and applications of various differential equations. He was quoted in the works of Augustin Louis Cauchy, George Boole, Joseph Liouville, and Betti. He was honored with membership in the most eminent Italian societies and became a foreign minister of the Swedish Academy of Sciences in Uppsala. As a teacher, he was applauded for over 30 years at the University of Rome. He devoted his life to raising the standards of scientific education on the peninsula at a time when Italy as a newly formed European power in 1860 needed a cultural presence on par with France, Germany, and England.
Founding of the Annali
Although he was a productive mathematician and devoted teacher, Tortolini is mainly remembered for his role in founding and publishing the first Italian international scientific journal, then published under the now defunct title, Annali di scienze matematiche e fisiche, from 1850 to 1857. This journal gathered and disseminated the work of the most notable scholars of the exact sciences in order to revive a love for higher educational studies in Italy and to bring to notice to other nations the scientific activity of the peninsula.