Renato Caccioppoli in Naples at the fifties, between politics and culture (Q1315143)

The study is devoted to Renato Caccioppoli, a great mathematician, considered as a real genius by all those who knew him. His main contributions were devoted to the functions of real variables, analytical functions with several variables and to the surface quadrature. He had the chance of living in a period of intense intellectual tumult, in Naples, in spite of the general post-war climate, characterized by the so-called cold war in Europe. Apart from his political, intense and sincere, involvement, he was especially interested in cinema, by the great creations of Chaplin, Rossellini, Eisenstein. He loved Jean Gabin. Also, he was fond of literature and music -- he used to play the piano. Nevertheless, his intellectual aristocracy, his radicalism that accepted no compromise, was not understood as such by some of his contemporaries. He came to commit suicide, probably a desperate gesture putting an end to an existential crisis, as another great Italian, Cesare Pavese. The author of the present study, Francesco Guizzi, considers him ``una stella fissa''.