Ernesto Laura book collection
Bibliographic material from the family of Ernesto Laura, mathematician, full professor of Rational Mechanics at the University of Padua (Porto Maurizio 1879 – Padua 1949).
1. History and Formation of the Fund
The first official news regarding Professor Ernesto Laura’s book donation can be traced back to the Annual Reports of the University of Trieste. In the 1949-1950 academic year, in the section dedicated to the Library, we find the following testimony:
"The Library, during the 1949-50 academic year, received gifts from various institutions and individuals; the most important bequests consisted of donations from the heirs of the late Professor Ernesto Laura, who bequeathed his specialized library to the Institute of Mathematics, which contains an extraordinary amount of bibliographic material, particularly significant for its miscellaneous section […]".
In the Annual Report of the following academic year, Laura’s passing and his generous bequest were also remembered in the report on the 1949-1950 academic year by the Magnificent Rector Angelo Cammarata (read on November 5, 1950):
"On December 29 of last year, Professor Ernesto Laura, former full professor of Rational Mechanics at the University of Padua and lecturer in Advanced Mechanics and Mathematical Physics at our Faculty of Sciences, suddenly passed away. With truly refined thought, he wanted to donate his library to the Mathematical Seminar of the Faculty, which he had, one could say, helped to establish. A heavy and not easily forgotten loss for both universities, for science, and for all those who had the honor of appreciating his great intellect and extensive knowledge, which were coupled with profound kindness, a sense of humanity, and an uncommon integrity. To his memory, the grateful and heartfelt greetings of the University of Trieste, his colleagues, and friends who were honored by his affection".
So, what were the events that led to the donation?
In 1946, the preparatory two-year course of the Faculty of Engineering at the University of Trieste began. The Faculty had been officially founded in 1942, but the start of courses had been delayed by the ongoing war. In this context, Ernesto Laura, then a full professor of Rational Mechanics at the University of Padua, was invited to evaluate the qualifications and examine the applications of candidates for the faculty positions. In 1946, the Faculty of Sciences was also established, and the mathematician Ugo Morin, also from the University of Padua, was appointed as its dean. Around the figures of Morin and Laura, along with the involvement of other colleagues from Padua, the Mathematical Seminar was created to coordinate research activities, which would later become the Institute of Mathematics in 1947.
From the 1946-1947 academic year, Laura was appointed as a lecturer in Mathematical Physics at the Faculty of Sciences, a position he held for the following two academic years (1947-1948 and 1948-1949).
Laura was also personally connected to the city of Trieste, as his daughter and grandchildren lived there; academic trips from Padua were thus an opportunity to take care of family matters. It was in this context that Laura likely made the decision to donate his personal bibliographic collection to the University (as suggested by the words of Rector Cammarata). His family would later make the donation official, and it became one of the founding collections of the Institute of Mathematics Library. The first entries in the inventory records are dated October 31, 1950, about ten months after Laura’s sudden death on December 29, 1949, which, although linked to several years of poor health, came as a shock.
2. Content and Location
The donation consists of approximately 5,000 bibliographic units, cataloged between October 31, 1950, and January 22, 1952.
The bibliographic material was collected in a dedicated room, the "Laura Room" of the former Library of the Department of Mathematics, Computer Science, and Geosciences, which is now part of the Technical-Scientific Library of the University Library System as a service point for Mathematical Sciences.
Only some issues of journals were extracted from the bequest to complement other collections of the same titles in the Library’s general holdings.
However, the entire collection is virtually unified through the University’s electronic catalog, which allows users to select the records of the bibliographic items that constitute the bequest.
3. Characteristics and Significant Items
The collection consists of approximately 210 monographs, an equal number of periodical volumes, and more than 4,000 extracts from journals and books. As noted in the bequest statement in the 1949-1950 Annual Report, these extracts form the most substantial and distinctive part of the bequest (the so-called "miscellaneous section"). Almost always bearing dedications and handwritten notes from the authors, these extracts testify to the close network of relationships that Laura maintained with the leading scholars of his time and the scientific esteem in which he was held. In some cases, the extracts were used as a basis for notes and annotations, and include handwritten calculations and mathematical formulas. They are preserved in 56 archival units and are arranged alphabetically by author.
Laura was the author of a popular textbook, Lezioni di meccanica razionale (Lectures on Rational Mechanics), published in various editions between 1928 and 1949 by the CEDAM publishing house in Padua. Among the bequest is a 1946 reprint of the fourth edition from 1943. Other printings of his lectures were published by various Turin printing houses (Gili, Paris, Gnocchi) during the years when he taught in the capital of Piedmont at the University and the Polytechnic. The bequest also contains what is probably a unique copy, intended for proofreading, of the 1912-1913 lecture print from the Royal Polytechnic of Turin, published by Gnocchi: this volume contains annotations, corrections, additions, and handwritten notes by Laura for the final version of the work.
Among the monographs, it is worth noting the presence of Memorie scelte (Selected Memoirs, Bologna, Zanichelli, 1937) by the mathematician Guido Castelnuovo (Venice, 1865 – Rome, 1952), author of numerous important works, especially in the field of Geometry, including the series of fundamental articles on the birational classification of algebraic surfaces, written in collaboration with Federico Enriques. These articles remain highly relevant and studied today, still serving as a source of inspiration for mathematicians. The Memorie scelte were published on the occasion of Castelnuovo's retirement in 1935, following a selection made by the author himself.
The periodicals in the collection mainly relate to the Scientific Societies to which Laura had been a member: he had been a member of the Lombard Institute of Sciences and Letters; a member, as well as extraordinary Commissioner in 1945-1946, of the Veneto Institute of Sciences, Letters, and Arts; a member and president in 1949-1950 of the Patavina Academy of Sciences, Letters, and Arts; and a member of the Italian Astronomical Society. Various volumes from the official publications of these institutions are preserved.
All the material is marked with labels and stamps bearing the donor’s name.
4. Enhancement of the Collection
The entire collection (monographs, periodicals, and miscellaneous section) has been cataloged and is searchable through the BiblioUniTS portal. All of the material (except, as mentioned, some issues of journals) has been transferred to the room dedicated to Ernesto Laura, which, prior to 2024, only contained a selection of monographs.
Additionally, the digital reproduction of the inventory registers of the Institute of Mathematics (1950-1951), which record the entries of the bequest, is available.
