Lamberto Cesari

Lamberto Cesari
Born	September 23, 1910 Bologna
Died	March 12, 1990 Ann Arbor
Nationality	Italian
Fields	mathematics
Known for	functions of bounded variation, nonlinear functional analysis

Lamberto Cesari ( September 23, 1910 Bologna – March 12, 1990 Ann Arbor) was an Italian mathematician naturalized in the United States.

[edit] Biography

In 1933 he got his laurea at the Scuola Normale Superiore at Pisa under the direction of Leonida Tonelli. After a period of study from 1934 to 1935 in Germany at Monaco di Baviera under the direction of Constantin Carathéodory, he went back to Pisa at the Scuola Normale Superiore for a year, and then to Rome at the Istituto Nazionale per le Applicazioni del Calcolo, at the time directed by Mauro Picone. From 1938 to 1946 he went back as a professore incaricato at Pisa University: in 1947 he is at the University of Bologna as a professor of mathematical analysis. In 1948 he went to the United States as a visiting professor at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, at Purdue University in Lafayette, at the University of California - Berkeley and at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. In 1960 he was appointed as a professor of mathematical analysis at the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor where he remaind until his retirement in 1981. In 1976 he become citizen of the united States, while keeping strict scientific contacts with the italian mathematical community.
The department of Mathematics at the University of Michigan honored the memory of Lamberto Cesari with the creation of a professorship chair, currently held by the mathematician Joel Smoller.

He is remembered for his achievements on the Plateau's problem and on the Lebesgue measure of continuous parametric minimal surfaces and related variational problems: he also worked in the field of optimal control and studied periodic solutions of systems of nonlinear ordinary differential equations by using methods of nonlinear functional analysis. In the paper (Cesari 1936) he introduced a generalization of functions of bounded variation to the multi-dimensional setting, now acknowledged as the most versatile of such generaizations . He wrote about 250 scientific works about non linear functional analysis comprising the following fundamental monographs:

Lamberto, Cesari (1956). Surface area. Princeton University Press, Annals of Mathematics Studies, 35, ISBN 069109585X.
Lamberto, Cesari (1959). Asymptotic behavior and stability problems in ordinary differential equations (2nd ed.). Springer Verlag, Ergebnisse Der Mathematik Und Ihrer Grenzgebiete, Vol. 16, ISBN 1114218286.
Lamberto, Cesari (1983). Optimization-Theory and Applications. Problems with ordinary differential equations. Springer Verlag Applications of Mathematics, Vol. 17, ISBN 0387906762.

Cesari, Lamberto (1936). Sulle funzioni a variazione limitata (On the functions of bounded variation). Annali della Scuola Normale Superiore 5.3:299-313. At Numdam (in italian).
Cesari, Lamberto (1986). "L'opera di Leonida Tonelli e la sua influenza nel pensiero scientifico del secolo (the work of Leonida Tonelli and his influence on scientific thinking in this century)" in G. Montalenti et als. (Ed.) Convegno celebrativo del centenario della nascita di Mauro Picone e Leonida Tonelli (International congress in occasion of the celebration of the centenary of birth of Mauro Picone and Leonida Tonelli) (pp. 41-73). Rome, 6-9 June 1985: Accademia Nazionale dei Lincei, Atti dei Convegni Lincei, Vol. 77. Some of his recollections about teachers and colleagues (in Italian).