Libera Trevisani Levi-Civita

Libera Trevisani Levi-Civita (17 May 1890 – 11 December 1973) was an Italian mathematician born in Verona.

Biography

She earned her classical lyceum A levels in 1908 at the "Bernardino Telesio" Lyceum in Cosenza then, in the 1908–1909 academic year, she matriculated at the University of Padova.

In 1912, she graduated at the University of Padova, under the scientific guide of the mathematician Tullio Levi-Civita, with a thesis titled "About the average motion within the three body problem". This thesis extended Levi-Civita's researches on the average asymptotic motion existence, for a point represented by the generic solution of a linear system with periodic coefficients, to the problem of the three bodies, whenever this is referred to the moon theory. The results achieved by Mrs Trevisani were so satisfactory that her mentor decided to present them to 28 April 1912 meeting at the Istituto veneto di scienze, lettere ed arti (Veneto's Institute of sciences, letters and arts). The note was published in the «Atti» (Records) in the same year.

In April 1914, the young Libera Trevisani became the wife of her mentor Tullio Levi-Civita.

In 1944 she was elected president of the reinstated FILDIS (Federazione Italiana Laureate e Diplomate di Istituti Superiori – Federation of Italian Graduated Women in Higher Education) which had been dissolved in 1935 by the fascist regime. She remained in office until 1953 and carried on institutional initiatives aimed at the empowerment of women and the protection of women's rights. In 1945 Libera took Susanna Silberstein away from the Florentine convent where her parents had placed her just before they were rounded up by the Nazis and later she adopted her.