Guido Stampacchia

Guido Stampacchia (1922 to 1978) was an Italian mathematician who worked on the calculus of variations and on elliptic partial differential equations, and who is counted among the two founding fathers of the theory of variational inequalities. Born in Naples, he began his studies at the Scuola Normale Superiore in Pisa, took his laurea at the University of Naples in 1944 with a thesis directed by Renato Caccioppoli, and later held chairs at Genoa, Rome and finally the Scuola Normale in Pisa. His 326 page text on second order elliptic equations with discontinuous coefficients appeared in 1966, and in 1967 he became president of the Italian Mathematical Union. His work on variational inequalities, a book completed with David Kinderlehrer after his death, found use in mechanics, physics, optimization and control. He died in Paris in 1978 after a heart attack.