Congratulations to Vincenzo De Risi, awarded with the CNRS Bronze Medal and the first Guidobaldo dal Monte Medal for research in the History of Science, from the University of Urbino
Doctor of philosophy and graduate in mathematics, Vincenzo De Risi is a CNRS research fellow at the SPHERE laboratory. He maintains strong ties with the Max Planck Institute for the History of Science in Berlin, where he was research director between 2010 and 2016, and visiting professor since 2017. In 2016, he was awarded a chair of excellence "Leibniz" at the University of Leipzig. He was also a visiting scholar at the University of California (Irvine) in 2018, at Stanford University in 2019, and then at Princeton University as a Whitney J. Oates Fellow of the Humanities Council. He was recently awarded the first Guidobaldo dal Monte Medal for research in the history of science from the University of Urbino.
Vincenzo De Risi’s scope of research is unusual : over a very broad period ranging from classical antiquity to the beginning of the modern era, he studies the history of science and philosophy, and more particularly the history of philosophy of space, in relation to the history of the foundations of geometry. He is interested both in philosophers who discussed the nature of space in relation to its mathematization (in particular Leibniz, but also Aristotle, Plotinus, the Renaissance neo-Platonist Francesco Patrizi and Kant), and in mathematicians whose geometric theories have important philosophical implications (Euclid in particular).
Vincenzo De Risi is considered one of the greatest experts on Leibniz’s geometry and philosophy of space. He also wrote his doctoral thesis on this subject, thesis which will then be published in 2007. He recently wrote a major article in which he demonstrates that Leibniz invented his concept of space by criticizing that of Newton, this parameter essential having escaped all previous performers.
Two new projects are in Vincenzo De Risi’s sights :
- The first is a book on the history of axiomatics in mathematics, from Euclid to the discovery of non-Euclidean geometries. He is already the author of numerous articles on the subject, which will be supplemented by new publications, and which will thus cover as many centuries of history of thought on the foundations of mathematics.
- The second project is a study of the tradition of Euclid’s Elements in modern times, which were the fundamental text of mathematics for many centuries, and one of the first scientific works translated into Latin, then into national languages. . The study of the Elements through the centuries is therefore a study of the history of mathematics, of epistemology, but also of the history of education, the history of language, the material history of editions , the history of visual studies (due to the geometric figures used), and much more…”
