Andreatta, Giovanni

De Marchi, Stefano

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Ricci Tensors and Wine in Lugo di Romagna and Padova, Italy

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Original Citation:Ricci Tensors and Wine in Lugo di Romagna and Padova, ItalySpringer New York LLCPublisher:Published version:DOI:Terms of use:Open Access(Article begins on next page)This article is made available under terms and conditions applicable to Open Access Guidelines, as described athttp://www.unipd.it/download/file/fid/55401 (Italian only)Availability:This version is available at: 11577/3253415 since: 2017-12-15T15:38:20Z10.1007/s00283-017-9735-9Università degli Studi di PadovaPadua Research Archive - Institutional RepositoryRicci tensors and wine inLugo di Romagna and Padova, ItalyStefano De Marchi∗and Giovanni AndreattaDepartment of Mathematics “Tullio Levi-Civita”University of PadovaVia Trieste, 63, 35121 Padova (Italy)March 31, 2017Some years ago the authors, who are both mathematicians and winesommeliers, were invited by a local wine producer to organize a wine tastingcourse on the relationship between famous mathematicians who taught atthe ancient and prestigious University of Padova (founded in 1222) in thepast and the wines they may have during their lifetimes. After a short brain-storming session we gave birth to the course “Drops of mathematics”. Dropsare interesting mathematical objects whose physics have long attracted theattention of differential geometers, mathematical physicists, analysts, and inthe present day computational era, numerical analysts for simulating theirbehaviour in fluids. From a wine taster’s point of view, wine is to be evalu-ated and not simply drunk, and that is why drops represented a fairly gooddefinition of the measure to be taken during a tasting session.Undoubtedly, Galileo Galilei is the best known mathematician who taughtin Padova, but he was too obvious a choice. We instead wanted to talk aboutsomeone less known to the general public and especially to the attendantsof our wine course, but nevertheless well-known to the mathematical com-munity. Gregorio Ricci Curbastro was the person that we decided to beginwith.1 We started with him, mainly for a non-mathematical reason: assommeliers we knew about and had already tasted, the very famous silkyFranciacorta DOCG Sate`n brut Ricci Curbastro (see Figure 1) producedby the homonymous farm estate founded by Gualberto Ricci Curbastro, anephew of Gregorio. The Ricci Curbastro family had invested and been in-volved in agriculture since the thirteenth century, operating farm estates in∗Corresponding author, e-mail:demarchi@math.unipd.it1We also presented the works and wines of Tullio Levi-Civita and Francesco Severi.1Lugo di Romagna (Ravenna), in Rontana di Brisighella (Ravenna), and thefarm estate of Capriolo in Franciacorta (Brescia), where the Sate`n brut isproduced. The acronym DOCG, which in Italian stands for Denominazionedi Origine Controllata e Garantita, represents the highest quality level inwhich Italian wines are classified. The classification from the lowest to thehighest quality is: Vino da Tavola, VdT, Indicazione Geografica Tipica,IGT, Denominazione di Origine, DOC and finally DOCG.Figure 1: Ricci Curbastro Sate`n brut was awarded for six consecutive yearsfrom 2001 to 2006 the “Cinque Grappoli” award by the Italian Somme-lier Association (AIS) and successively by other wine societies worldwide.The Sate`n Brut is the ultimate expression of the typicality and harmony ofFranciacorta DOCG.Gregorio Ricci Curbastro was born in Lugo di Romagna, or simply Lugo,on January 12, 1853 (see Figure 2). The name of the town refers to the partof the region, Emilia Romagna, to which it belongs. This part of the regionwas under the administration of the Vatican state for about 1000 years.Today the area is famous for its rich cuisine, its wonderful beaches, andvibrant nightlife. Surely at the time of Gregorio Ricci Curbastro the lifestyle was much different!The house in Lugo in which Gregorio grew up is still standing (the ad-2Figure 2: This map shows the cities of our story and some other importantand well-known towns: Roma, Milano, Torino and Firenze.dress is Corso Garibaldi 41 - 48022 Lugo). At the age of 16 he movedto the universities of Bologna, the Scuola Normale Superiore of Pisa andPadova where he received the “laurea” degree in mathematical sciences in1875. The municipality of Lugo is also proud of this famous citizen for twoother reasons. Firstly, as a member of the municipal council of Lugo hepresented, among other things, a deep and detailed study on controlling thewater level in the local canals to prevent flooding in the area. Secondly,due to his research, he provided mathematical tools to Albert Einstein forthe development of the theory of general relativity. In Lugo on the facadeof the Ricci Curbastro family home there is the inscription (see Figure 3):“Diede alla scienza il calcolo differenziale assoluto, strumento in-dispensabile per la teoria della relativita` generale, visione nuovadell’universo”, that can be translated as “He gave to science the absolutedifferential calculus, the fundamental tool for the theory of general relativ-ity, a new view of the universe”. There is also the Ricci Curbastro familytomb in the Lugo cemetery, in Via de’ Brozzi 68 (Lugo), where Gregorio wasburied (see Figure 4) and a lyceum dedicated to Gregorio Ricci Curbastroand in San Vitale, a part of Lugo, a street is named after him. Lugo diRomagna is also connected to another famous Italian, the opera composerGioacchino Rossini. For our readers we suggest to visit and perhaps at-tend an opera, in the Teatro Rossini one of the most interesting theatres3Figure 3: House where Gregorio Ricci Curbastro was born. The first authorwent to visit the house (he is standing below the inscription), but nowadaysit belongs to new owners and is not open to the public.“all’italiana” of the Emilia-Romagna region (see [7]). It is also worthwhilevisiting Casa Rossini, the house that was owned by Rossini’s father, nowconverted into a museum.Returning to Gregorio Ricci Curbastro and his connection with the townof Padova, he was full professor of mathematical physics at the famous andold University for 45 years, from 1880 till his death in 1925. It seems he wasproud of this: on the headstone of his grave is written (in Italian) ”per 45anni professore nell’Universita` di Padova“ (see Figure 4). In [ [5]] we read onthe front page: “Ricci Curbastro was the Italian mathematician who savedthe general relativity of Einstein”. It is well-known that Einstein was stuckand found in the Ricci tensor calculus the algorithmic tool for transforminghis intuition into a solid physical theory. Unlike Einstein, Ricci Curbastrowas a distinguished and austere nineteenth century gentleman who was veryhumble, reserved, and devoid of communicative warmth (see his portrait inthe left part of Figure 5). But Einstein recognized in Ricci the mathematicalgenius who produced that elegant theory and (see [3]) went to Padova on27 October 1921 just to meet him. Einstein gave a talk in the same room,4Figure 4: Ricci Curbastro family tomb in the cemetery of Lugo where Gre-gorio, his wife and relatives were buried.the “Aula Magna” at Palazzo del Bo (in English Bo means Ox), at Via 8Febbraio 1848, where three centuries earlier Galileo had given his lectureson the new theory of mechanics. As a side note, the Palazzo del Bo is todaythe location of the Rector’s offices. Unfortunately, there are no photos ofthat occasion, but it was well documented in the Italian newspapers and ina short article appeared in the local newspaper Il Veneto, as reported in [5,p. 254].There are other places in Padova where we can find traces of Ricci Cur-bastro. The first and most important is the Department of Mathematics, inVia Trieste 63, recently dedicated to Ricci Curbastro’ most famous student,Tullio Levi-Civita. On entering the Departmental Library (entrance fromstair A, floor -1), we immediately see the bas-relief in Figure 5. Moreover,by asking the librararian one may take a look at his papers. On the fourthfloor his old desk is currently being used by our colleague of mathematicallogic, Professor Giovanni Sambin, a member of the Accademia Galileiana diScienze Lettere ed Arti in Padova of which Ricci Curbastro was presidentfrom 1920 to 1922 (see [1]). In Figure 6 Professor Sambin is seated at RicciCurbastro’s desk. In 2005, on the occasion of the World Physics year, theUniversity of Padova dedicated a medal to these two famous mathematicians5Figure 5: Left: Ricci Curbastro portrait. Right: the bas-relief in the De-partment of Mathematics library, it says “The austere image of GregorioRicci Curbastro among the books that he connected to the study, where hewas a venerated teacher [...]”(see Figure 7) that can be found in the archive of the University, located inthe Palazzo del Bo. On the front side there are the two “columns of modernphysics”: Einstein and Galileo. Galileo, as we already noted, was professorin Padova for 18 years, from 1592 to 1610, the year he published his famousbook “Sidereo Nuncius”. In it he wrote “I spent 18 years in Padova, thebest of my career”. Einstein as we already observed, was grateful to RicciCurbastro and Levi-Civita for the mathematical tools they provided withthe absolute differential calculus. On the back side of the medal there arethe two mathematicians that made the University of Padova a center of at-traction for the mathematical physics and geometry of the beginning of thetwentieth century. For interested tourists, in the Palazzo del Bo, in additionto Galileo’s podium, one can see the world’s first permanent anatomical the-atre, dating from the 16th century. These and other important “symbols”of the University can be visited by taking one of the daily guided tours or-ganized by the University (they can be booked online at the University website www.unipd.it).6Figure 6: The desk, now used by prof. Giovanni Sambin, was owned byGregorio Ricci CurbastroFigure 7: This medal is kept at the University of Padova’s main archive atthe main building of the University: Palazzo del Bo. It was designed bythe sculptress Orietta Rossi on the occasion of the World Physics Year 2005(see the brochure [2] at p. 29.).In Padova there is still more evidence of Ricci-Curbastro’s role in thehistory of the town. The municipality of Padova has named a street af-ter this prominent citizen, Via Gregorio Ricci Curbastro (GPS coordinates[45.396772, 11.890183]). This street intersects another named for Levi-Civita.7There is also a primary school dedicated to Gregorio Ricci Curbastro andthe house where he lived during his time in Padova. The house was locatednear the Abbey of Santa Giustina, the oldest and biggest church of Padova(paleo-christian architecture dating back to the year 565). Unfortunately,this house does not belong this his family anymore and there are no moreindications to find the house.Padova has a number of other other architectural pearls. Among themwe recommend visiting the Cappella degli Scrovegni completely decoratedby Giotto’s frescos, the Palazzo della Ragione which was the old tribunal(built in 1218) consisting of a single hall of size 81 by 27 meters and heightof 27 meters. We also suggest a visit to the Basilica of St. Antony simplyknown as “Il Santo”. More information can be found at the link [8].The reason people do not know much about Gregorio can be found inmany testimonials (cf. [4, 5, 3]) which commonly describe him as a gen-tleman, not interested in the social life, in perfect harmony between scienceand faith, the man that for nearly half a century ran the frontiers of knowl-edge (see the commemoration paper [4] in the occasion of the centenary ofhis birth). Mr. Marchiani Mauro, president of the association “Pro Loco diLugo” (see also [6]), confirmed this, telling us his reserve, common to manymathematicians, made him not as popular as other citizens of Lugo, likeFrancesco Baracca, one of the most famous Italian war heroes. But this isanother story.Gregorio Ricci Curbastro split his life mainly in two regions: EmiliaRomagna and Veneto (see Figure 2). We like to think that he was usedto eat typical dishes and specialities of the regions accompanied by classicallocal wines. In Lugo he perhaps enjoyed the “Tardura”, is a lumpy egg-soup,accompanied by the typical red wine “Sangiovese”. In Padova he couldhave tasted the “Gran bollito alla padovana”, which consists of differentpieces of boiled meats (beef, chicken, pork) accompanied with the traditional“Friularo”, one of the most popular red wines of Padova area.We would like to conclude our tour as we started, with the Sate`n sparklingwine, by making a toast to this great mathematician. Indeed, just beforelast Christmas, following a long tradition at the Department of Mathemat-ics, we organized a departmental party (in which everyone brings somethingand shares it with their colleagues). On this occasion we used the RicciCurbastro Sate`n (see Figure 1) to make our toast of season’s greetings toeveryone by honoring the memory of our past colleague: the great Gre-gorio Ricci Curbastro. Readers can order this wine from the on-line storehttp://www.riccicurbastro.it/inglese/.8Acknowledgments. We thank our colleague prof. Giovanni Sambin for thephoto in Figure 6, the head of the Department of Mathematics “Tullio Levi-Civita”, prof. Marco Ferrante, that allowed us to take the photo 5. We aregrateful to dr. Giorgio Salvan for suggesting and hosting the course “Dropsof mathematis”. We thank also prof. Len Bos of University of Verona forhis suggestions in making the paper more readable. Special thanks also toMr. Mauro Marchiani, president of the association “Pro Loco di Lugo”,for his help in giving directions on the relevant places of Ricci Curbastro’sevidences in Lugo.This work has been supported by the University of Padova DOR 2016funds.References[1] Accademia Galileiana: http://www.accademiagalileiana.it/.[2] La storia in una medaglia: le “oselle” dell’ Universita` di Padova 1990-2012, Amici dell’ Universita` di Padova, brochure, pp. 40 (2013).[3] Enrico Sangiorgi, Gregorio Ricci Curbastro: un matematico in famiglia,Rotary Club of Forl`ı, commemoration, 2 May 2006.[4] Angelo Tonolo, Commemorazione di Gregorio Ricci Curbastro nelprimo centenario della nascita, Rend. Sem. Mat. Padova 23 (1954),1–24.[5] Fabio Toscano, Il genio e il gentiluomo, Sironi editore, 2nd edition 2005,pp. 313.[6] ProLoco Lugo: http://prolocolugo.racine.ra.it/.[7] Teatro Rossini in Lugo: http://www.teatrorossini.it/english/history.php.[8] Tourist information Padova: http://www.turismopadova.it/en.9

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Ricci Tensors and Wine in Lugo di Romagna and Padova, Italy

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