Vincenzo Mollame

Vincenzo Mollame (Naples, 4 July 1848 – Catania, 23 June 1912) was an Italian mathematician.

Mollame was privately tutored by Achille Sanni and then studied Mathematics at the University of Naples Federico II. After obtaining his degree, he became a high-school teacher, first at Benevento and after that at Naples, starting in 1878. He became a professor at the University of Catania in 1880 and remained there for the rest of his career, having retired in 1911, a few months before his death.[1]

His research area was the theory of equations and he proved in 1890 that when a cubic polynomial with rational coefficients has three real roots but it is irreducible in Q[x] (the so-called casus irreducibilis), then the roots cannot be expressed from the coefficients using real radicals alone, that is, complex non-real numbers must be involved if one expresses the roots from the coefficients using radicals,[2] probably unaware of the fact that Pierre Wantzel had already proved it in 1843. Molleme's research activity stopped in 1896, due to health problems.

Mollame was the author of a textbook on determinants.[3]

Notes

  1. ↑ Marchisotto, Elena Anne; Smith, James (2007), "Life and works", The Legacy of Mario Pieri in Geometry and Arithmetic, Birkhäuser, ISBN 978-0-8176-3210-6
  2. ↑ Mollame, Vincenzo (1890), "Sul casus irreductibilis dell'equazione cubica", Rendiconto dell'Accademia delle scienze fisiche e matematiche (sezione della società Reale di Napoli) II (in Italian), 4: 167–171
  3. ↑ Mollame, Vincenzo (1878), I determinanti e loro applicazioni all' algebra ed alla geometria analitica (in Italian), Tipografia dell'Accademia reale delle scienze

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