Gaetano Fichera (8 February 1922 – 1 June 1996) was an Italian mathematician, working in mathematical analysis, linear elasticity, partial differential equations and several complex variables. He was born in Acireale, and died in Rome.
Biography He was born in Acireale, a town near Catania in Sicily, the elder of the four sons of Giuseppe Fichera and Marianna Abate. His father Giuseppe was a professor of mathematics and influenced the young Gaetano starting his lifelong passion. In his young years he was a talented football player. On 1 February 1943 he was in the Italian Army and during the events of September 1943 he was taken prisoner by the Nazist troops, kept imprisoned in Teramo and then sent to Verona: he succeeded in escaping from there and reached the Italian region of Emilia-Romagna, spending with partisans the last year of war. After the war he was first in Rome and then in Trieste, where he met Matelda Colautti, who became his wife in 1952.
Education and academic career After graduating from the liceo classico in only two years, he entered the University of Catania at the age of 16, being there from 1937 to 1939 and studying under Pia Nalli. Then he went to the university of Rome, where in 1941 he earned his laurea with magna cum laude under the direction of Mauro Picone, when he was only 19. He was immediately appointed by Picone as an assistant professor to his chair and as a researcher at the Istituto Nazionale per le Applicazioni del Calcolo, becoming his pupil. After the war he went back to Rome working with Mauro Picone: in 1948 he became "Libero Docente" (free professor) of mathematical analysis and in 1949 he was appointed as full professor at the University of Trieste. As he remembers in (Fichera 1991b, p. 14), in both cases one of the members of the judging commission was Renato Caccioppoli, which become a close friend of him. From 1956 onward he was full professor at the Sapienza University of Rome in the chair of mathematical analysis and then at the Istituto Nazionale di Alta Matematica in the chair of higher analysis, succeeding to Luigi Fantappiè. He retired from university teaching in 1992, but was professionally active until his death in 1996: particularly, as a member of the Accademia Nazionale dei Lincei and first director of the journal Rendiconti Lincei – Matematica e Applicazioni, he succeeded in reviving its reputation.
Honours He was member of several academies, notably of the Accademia Nazionale dei Lincei, the Accademia Nazionale delle Scienze detta dei XL and of the Russian Academy of Science.
Teachers His lifelong friendship with his teacher Mauro Picone is remembered by him in several occasions. As recalled by Colautti Fichera (2006, pp. 13–14), his father Giuseppe was an assistant professor to the chair of Picone while he was teaching at the University of Catania: they become friends and their friendship lasted even when Giuseppe was forced to leave the academic career for economic reasons, being already the father of two sons, until Giuseppe's death. The young, in effect child, Gaetano, was kept by Picone in his arms. From 1939 to 1941 the young Fichera developed his research directly under the supervision of Picone: as he remembers, it was a time of intense work. But also, when he was back from the front in April 1945 he met Picone while he was in Rome in his way back to Sicily, and his advisor was so happy to see him as a father can be seeing its living child. Another mathematician Fichera was influenced by and acknowledged as one of his teachers and inspirators was Pia Nalli: she was an outstanding analyst, teaching for several years at the University of Catania, being his teacher of mathematical analysis from 1937 to 1939. Antonio Signorini and Francesco Severi were two of Fichera's teachers of the Roman period: the first one introduced him and inspired his research in the field of linear elasticity while the second inspired his research in the field he taught him i.e. the theory of analytic functions of several complex variables. Signorini had a strong long-time friendship with Picone: on a wall of the apartment building where they lived, in Via delle Tre Madonne, 18 in Rome, a memorial tablet which commemorates the two friends is placed, as Fichera (1995b, p. 47) recalls. The two great mathematicians extended their friendship to the young Fichera, and as a consequence this led to the solution of the Signorini problem and the foundation of the theory of variational inequalities. Fichera's relations with Severi were not as friendly as with Signorini and Picone: nevertheless, Severi, which was one of the most influential Italian mathematicians of the first half of the 20th century, esteemed the young mathematician. During a course on the theory of analytic functions of several complex variables taught at the Istituto Nazionale di Alta Matematica from the fall of 1956 and the beginning of the 1957, whose lectures were collected in the book (Severi 1958), Severi posed the problem of generalizing his theorem on the Dirichlet problem for holomorphic function of several variables, as Fichera (1957, p. 707) recalls: the result was the paper (Fichera 1957), which is a masterpiece, although not generally acknowledged for various reasons described by Range (2002, pp. 6–11). Other scientists he had as teachers during the period 1939–1941 were Enrico Bompiani, Leonida Tonelli and Giuseppe Armellini: he remembered them with great respect and admiration, even if he did not share all their opinions and ideas, as Colautti Fichera (2006, p. 16) recalls.
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