Luigi Fantappiè

Luigi Fantappiè, who lived from 1901 to 1956, was an Italian mathematician known for his work in mathematical analysis and for creating the theory of analytic functionals; he was a student and follower of Vito Volterra. Born in Viterbo, he graduated in mathematics from the University of Pisa in 1922, held chairs at Florence and Palermo, spent the years 1934 to 1939 at the University of São Paulo, and from 1939 held a chair at the University of Rome. In 1941 he proposed that negative entropy has qualities associated with life, and in 1942 he put forward a unified theory of physics and biology built on the concept of syntropy. From 1952 he worked on a unified theory called projective relativity. He tried to combine his scientific research with his Catholic faith.