Francesco Brioschi

Francesco Brioschi was an Italian mathematician who contributed to the study of mathematical physics, born in Milan on 22 December 1824. He graduated from the Collegio Borromeo in 1847 and from 1850 taught analytical mechanics at the University of Pavia. After the Italian unification in 1861 he was elected to the Chamber of Deputies and was twice appointed secretary of the Italian Education Ministry, and in 1863 he founded the Polytechnic University of Milan, where he worked until his death in 1897. He directed the review Il Politecnico and, between 1867 and 1877, the Annali di Matematica Pura ed Applicata. He published algebraic theories and studied the problem of solving fifth and sixth-degree equations using elliptic functions, and his students at Pavia included Eugenio Beltrami, Luigi Cremona and Felice Casorati.