Piergiorgio Odifreddi facts for kids
Quick facts for kids
Piergiorgio Odifreddi
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| Born | 13 July 1950 |
| Nationality | Italian |
| Occupation | Mathematician |
Piergiorgio Odifreddi (born July 13, 1950, in Cuneo, Italy) is a famous Italian mathematician and logician. He is also a writer who makes science easy to understand for everyone. He writes about the history of science and shares his ideas on atheism, which means not believing in a god. He is part of the Italian Union of Rationalist Atheists and Agnostics. His ideas are similar to those of Bertrand Russell and Noam Chomsky, who were also well-known thinkers.
Contents
Early Life and School
Piergiorgio Odifreddi was born in Cuneo, a city in the Piedmont region of Italy. He studied mathematics at the University of Turin and graduated with honors in 1973.
After that, he continued his studies in other countries. From 1978 to 1980, he went to the United States. He studied at the University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign and UCLA. Later, in 1982 and 1983, he studied in the Soviet Union at Novosibirsk State University.
Teaching Career
From 1983 to 2007, Odifreddi taught logic at the University of Turin in Italy. Logic is a part of mathematics and philosophy that studies how we reason and think correctly.
He also spent time teaching in other countries. From 1985 to 2003, he was a visiting professor at Cornell University in the United States. There, he worked with other important mathematicians like Anil Nerode and Richard Shore. He also taught at Vita-Salute San Raffaele University in Italy from 2001 to 2003.
Odifreddi was a visiting professor at many other universities around the world:
- Monash University in Melbourne, Australia, in 1988.
- The Chinese Academy of Sciences in Beijing, China, in 1992 and 1995.
- Nanjing University in China in 1998.
- Buenos Aires University in Argentina in 2001.
- The Italian Academy at Columbia University in the United States in 2006.
His main area of study is called computability theory. This is a part of mathematical logic that looks at what problems computers can solve automatically. He has written many articles and a very important two-volume book called Classical Recursion Theory on this topic.
Writing and Media
Piergiorgio Odifreddi is a well-known writer. He has written for many newspapers and magazines. He wrote editorials and book reviews for La rivista dei libri, which is the Italian version of the New York Review of Books. He also regularly writes for Le Scienze, the Italian version of Scientific American.
He has also written for major Italian newspapers like La Repubblica and La Stampa, and the weekly magazine L'Espresso.
Odifreddi has appeared on Italian television and radio shows. He has discussed many scientific topics on channels like Radio Tre, RAI Due, and RAI Tre.
He has written many popular books that explain logic, mathematics, geometry, and other scientific ideas in a way that is easy to understand. His books often cover many different subjects, including philosophy and literature. He has also written books about politics and his views on Christianity.
Political Views
Piergiorgio Odifreddi's political ideas are greatly influenced by thinkers like Bertrand Russell and Noam Chomsky. He has often spoken out against certain policies, especially those of the United States and Israel. He wrote books like Non siamo tutti americani (We are not all Americans) and La dannata Terra Santa (The Damned Holy Land).
One of his books, Il matematico impertinente (The Impertinent Mathematician), included a controversial section called Intervista a Hitler (Interview with Hitler).
In November 2012, he wrote an article on his blog for La Repubblica about the Israeli actions in the Gaza Strip. His views, which he said were inspired by José Saramago and Noam Chomsky, caused some disagreement. This led to his article being removed from the blog. Because of this, he decided to close his blog for a few years, but he later reopened it.
Radio and Television Appearances
Odifreddi has been on Italian TV over 400 times. Some of his notable radio shows include:
- 2002 – Chi ha ucciso Fermat? (Who Killed Fermat?), 20 episodes on Radio2.
- 2004 – Vite da logico (Lives of a Logician), 20 episodes on Radio2.
- 2008 – In Cammino verso Santiago de Compostela (Walking Towards Santiago de Compostela), 33 episodes on Radio3.
- 2009 – A tutto Darwin (All About Darwin), 5 episodes on Radio3, with interviews including Dario Fo.
- 2009 – Buon compleanno, Darwin! (Happy Birthday, Darwin!), 20 episodes on Radio2.
- 2009 – A tutto Galileo (All About Galileo), 5 episodes on Radio3, with interviews including Roberto Benigni and Riccardo Giacconi.
Other Activities
In 2007, Piergiorgio Odifreddi took part in the Stock Exchange of Visions project. This project brought together thinkers from different fields to share their ideas about the future.
Awards and Honors
Piergiorgio Odifreddi has received several important awards for his work:
- 1998 – Galileo Prize from the Italian Mathematical Union.
- 2002 – Peano Prize from Mathesis.
- 2005 – Commander of the Order of Merit of the Italian Republic. This is a high honor given by the Italian government.
Works
Popular Books
Piergiorgio Odifreddi has written many books for the general public, making complex topics easier to understand. Some of his well-known books include:
- Il Vangelo secondo la Scienza (The Gospel According to Science), 1999.
- La matematica del Novecento (The Mathematics of the 20th Century), 2000. This book was also translated into English as The Mathematical Century: The 30 greatest problems of the last 100 years.
- Il computer di Dio (God's Computer), 2000.
- C'era una volta un paradosso (Once upon a time there was a paradox), 2001.
- La repubblica dei numeri (The Republic of Numbers), 2002.
- Il diavolo in cattedra. La logica matematica da Aristotele a Kurt Gödel (The Devil in the Professor's Chair: Mathematical Logic from Aristotle to Kurt Goedel), 2003.
- Divertimento geometrico – Da Euclide ad David Hilbert (Geometric Diversions – From Euclid to Hilbert), 2003.
- Le menzogne di Ulisse. L'avventura della logica da Parmenide ad Amartya Sen (Ulysses' Lies. The Adventure of Logic from Parmenides to Amartya Sen), 2004.
- Il matematico impertinente (The Impertinent Mathematician), 2005.
- Idee per diventare matematico (Ideas for becoming a mathematician), 2005.
- Incontri con menti straordinarie (Meetings with extraordinary minds), 2006.
- Che cos'è la logica? (What is logic?), 2006.
- Perché non-possiamo essere cristiani (e meno che mai cattolici) (Why we cannot be Christians (much less Catholics)), 2007.
- In principio era Darwin. La vita, il pensiero, il dibattito sull'evoluzionismo (In principle it was Darwin. Life, thought and the debate about evolutionism), 2009.
- Hai vinto, Galileo! La vita, il pensiero, il dibattito su scienza e fede (You won, Galileo! Life, thought and the debate on science and faith), 2009.
- C'è spazio per tutti. Il grande racconto della geometria (There's space for everyone. The grand tale of geometry), 2010.
