Born inAncona, then part of thePapal States, into a very poorJewish family: his father was Abramo Volterra and his mother, Angelica Almagià. Abramo Volterra died in 1862 when Vito was two years old. The family moved toTurin, and then toFlorence, where he studied at the Dante Alighieri Technical School and the Galileo Galilei Technical Institute.[5]
Volterra showed early promise inmathematics before attending theUniversity of Pisa, where he fell under the influence ofEnrico Betti, and where he became professor of rational mechanics in 1883. He immediately started work developing his theory offunctionals which led to his interest and later contributions inintegral andintegro-differential equations. His work is summarised in his bookTheory of functionals and of Integral and Integro-Differential Equations (1930).
In 1892, he became professor of mechanics at theUniversity of Turin and then, in 1900, professor of mathematical physics at theUniversity of Rome La Sapienza. Volterra had grown up during the final stages of theRisorgimento when the Papal States were finally annexed byItaly and, like his mentor Betti, he was an enthusiastic patriot, being named by the kingVictor Emmanuel III as asenator of the Kingdom of Italy in 1905. In the same year, he began to develop the theory ofdislocations incrystals that was later to become important in the understanding of the behaviour ofductile materials. On the outbreak ofWorld War I, already well into his 50s, he joined theItalian Army and worked on the development ofairships underGiulio Douhet. He originated the idea of using inerthelium rather than flammablehydrogen and made use of his leadership abilities in organising its manufacture.[citation needed]
After World War I, Volterra turned his attention to the application of his mathematical ideas to biology, principally reiterating and developing the work ofPierre François Verhulst. An outcome of this period is theLotka–Volterra equations.
In 1922, he joined the opposition to theFascist regime ofBenito Mussolini and in 1931 he was one of only 12 out of 1,250 professors who refused to take a mandatory oath of loyalty. His political philosophy can be seen in a postcard he sent in the 1930s, on which he wrote what can be seen as an epitaph for Mussolini's Italy:Empires die, but Euclid’s theorems keep their youth forever. However, Volterra was no radical firebrand; he might have been equally appalled if the leftist opposition to Mussolini had come to power since he was a lifelong royalist and nationalist. As a result of his refusal to sign the oath of allegiance to the fascist government he was compelled to resign his university post and his membership of scientific academies, and, during the following years, he lived largely abroad, returning toRome just before his death.
He died inRome on 11 October 1940. He is buried in theAriccia Cemetery. The Pontifical Academy organised his funeral and its PresidentCarlo Somigliana edited a long obituary in theOsservatore romano on 12 October 1940.[13]
In 1900 he married Virginia Almagia, a cousin.[14] Their sonEdoardo Volterra (1904–1984) was a famous historian of Roman law.[15]
Volterra also had a daughter, Luisa Volterra, who married the biologistUmberto D'Ancona. D'Ancona piqued his father-in-law's interest in biomathematics when he showed Vito a set of data regarding populations of different species of fish in the Adriatic Sea, where decreased fishing activity from the war had led to an increase in the populations of predatory fish species. Vito published an analysis of the dynamics of interacting species of fish the next year.
^Borsellino, A.[in Italian] (1980). "Vito Volterra and Contemporary Mathematical Biology". In Barigozzi, Claudio (ed.).Vito Volterra Symposium on Mathematical Models in Biology. New York: Springer. pp. 410–417.ISBN0-387-10279-5.
^According toAccardi (1992, p. 150). Precisely, Accardi's analysis of the contribution of Volterra to the founding of functional analysis is aimed to show that he was the sole founder of the field, and to stimulate the readers to read Volterra's original papers.
^Sturm, Fritz (1987). "Edoardo Volterra (1904–1984)".Zeitschrift der Savigny-Stiftung für Rechtsgeschichte: Romanistische Abteilung (in German).104 (1):918–926.doi:10.7767/zrgra.1987.104.1.918.S2CID180699084.
Gemelli, Agostino (1942),"La relazione del presidente" [The president's relation](PDF),Acta Pontificia Academia Scientarum,6:XI–XXIV. The commemorative address pronounced by Agostino Gemelli on the occasion of the first seance of the fourth academic year of Pontifical Academy of Sciences: it includes his commemoration of various deceased members.
Pancaldi, Giuliano (1993), "Vito Volterra: Cosmopolitan Ideals and Nationality in the Italian Scientific Community between theBelle époque and the First World War",Minerva,31 (1):21–37,doi:10.1007/BF01096170,ISSN0026-4695,S2CID144918235.
Israel, G. (1988). "On the contribution of Volterra and Lotka to the development of modern biomathematics".History and Philosophy of the Life Sciences.10 (1):37–49.PMID3045853.
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