The life and mathematics of Norberto Cuesta (1907-1989)

• José María Pacheco ^[1]
  1. [1] Universidad de Las Palmas de Gran Canaria

     Universidad de Las Palmas de Gran Canaria

     Gran Canaria, España

     
• Localización: Revista de la Academia Canaria de Ciencias: = Folia Canariensis Academiae Scientiarum, ISSN 1130-4723, Vol. 26, Nº. 2, 2014, págs. 85-125
• Idioma: inglés
• Enlaces
  • Texto completo
• Resumen

  • This biography describes the activity as a mathematician, historian, and compromised person of the Spanish Professor Norberto Cuesta Dutari (1907-1989) [Cuesta, or the Professor, in the rest of the paper] under the social, política! and scientific environmental conditions in Spain during General Franco's regime (1939-1975) and the first years after the democratic restoration. First, it is shown that his deepest and most original contributions to Mathematics were obtained in the darkest years after the Spanish civil war, a remarkable achievement in the 1940s' social and política! context, when strong interna! tensions among the various fractions of the regime supporters, generalised poverty, and international isolation made life - not only scientifically speaking- a difficult endeavour in Spain. Second, the isolation of Cuesta, resulting from a mixture of personal and environmental conditions, was also a constant in his vital trajectory, though he tried to overcome t his handicap by steadily writing and publishing, and in his last life years as the active promoter of a study track in Mathematics at Salamanca.

    The body of the paper is preceded by a general introduction considering those aspects of the general Spanish panorama after t he civil war needed to contextualise the narrative, followed by a succession of portraits addressing personal facts, Mathematics, contributions to mathematical Education and to the History of Mathematics, ending with the role played by Cuesta in the establishing of new Mathematics studies in Spain. Appendices presenting a hopefully complete list of publications and other facts are also included, among them a non-technical study of his main mathematical result of 1943 and its 1955 generalisation.