Eugenio Beltramy and Non-Euclidian Geometry.
On November 16 1835 mathematician Eugenio Beltrami was born. He is most notable for his work concerning differential geometry and mathematical physics. His work was noted especially for clarity of exposition. He was the first to prove consistency of non-Euclidean geometry by modeling it on a surface of constant curvature the pseudosphere. Eugenio Beltrami was born in Cremona in Lombardy then a part of the Austrian Empire and now part of Italy. The son of an artist who painted miniatures, young Eugenio certainly inherited artistic talents from his family, but in his case in addition to the mathematical talents he would acquire, it was music than painting that became important in his life. He began studying mathematics at University of Pavia in 1853 but was expelled from Ghislieri College in 1856 due to his political opinions. During this time he was taught and influenced by Francesco Brioschi who had been appointed as professor of applied mathematics at the University of Pavia the year before Beltrami his studies. Beltrami to discontinue his studies because of financial hardship and spent the next several years as a secretary working for the Lombardy–Venice railroad company first in Verona and later in Milan. While Beltrami in Milan the Kingdom of Italy was established in 1861 an important political event which did much to invigorate the academic scene in Italy Beltrami to work hard at his mathematical studies again and in 1862 he published his first paper. As a result, he was appointed to the University of Bologna as a professor in 1862. In 1870 a new University of Rome was set up in the new Italian capital and Beltrami was appointed to the chair of rational mechanics there in 1873. After three years in Rome Beltrami moved to Pavi to take up the chair of mathematical physics. However, Beltrami to Rome in 1891 and spent his last years teaching there. . He became the president of the Accademia dei Lincei in 1898 and, the following year, a senator of the kingdom. A lover of music Beltrami interested in the relationship between mathematics was interested in the relationship between mathematics and music. . In 1868 Beltrami published two memoirs dealing with consistency and interpretations of non-Euclidean geometry of Bolyai. Lobachevsky Beltrami proposed that this geometry could be realized on a surface of constant negative curvature, a pseudosphere. For Beltrami's concept, lines of the geometry are represented by geodesics on the pseudosphere and theorems of non-Euclidean geometry can be proved within ordinary three-dimensional Euclidean space and not derived in an axiomatic fashion, as Lobachevsky and Bolyai done previously. Already in 1840 Minding already considered geodesic triangles on the pseudosphere and remarked that the corresponding "are obtained from the corresponding formulas of spherical trigonometry by replacing the usual trigonometric functions with hyperbolic functions. In the second memoir "Fundamental theory of spaces of constant curvature", Beltrami continued this logic and gave an abstract proof of equiconsistency of hyperbolic and Euclidean geometry for any dimension. He accomplished this by introducing several models of non-Euclidean geometry that are now known as the Beltrami–Klein model the Poincaré disk model and the Poincaré half-plane model together with transformations that relate them. Although today Beltrami's "Essay" is recognized as very important for the development of non-Euclidean geometry the reception at the time was less enthusiastic. Beltrami also worked on optics thermodynamics elasticity electricity and magnetism. His contributions to these topics appeared in the four-volume work, Opere Matematiche (1902-20), published posthumously. At yovisto, you can learn more about Non-Euclidian geometry in the History of Mathematics lecture of Professor N. J. Wildberger "MathHist12 - Non-Euclidian Geometry".