Eugenio Calabi, child prodigy, renowned mathematician, and professor emeritus at Penn, has died at 100
He knew Einstein and Oppenheimer, and is most well-known for his pioneering work on Calabi-Yau manifolds. “It is a pure joy to read his works,” a colleague said.
Eugenio Calabi, 100, of Bryn Mawr, child prodigy, celebrated mathematician, professor emeritus at the University of Pennsylvania, and veteran, died Monday, Sept. 25, of frailty syndrome at his home at Beaumont at Bryn Mawr retirement community.
Born in Milan, Italy, Dr. Calabi was completing intricate multiplication problems and discussing prime numbers with his parents and teachers when he was 6. Later, he spent three decades in the Department of Mathematics at Penn and became world renowned for his pioneering work in differential geometry, geometric flow, string theory research, and other complex mathematical concepts.
His name is attached to dozens of theorems, conjectures, characterizations, and principles, most notably the Calabi-Yau manifolds. He studied with and lectured to the world’s greatest mathematicians and scientists for more than 80 years, and colleague Blaine Lawson said in 2020 that his contributions to math and physics were “revolutionary” and “transformational.”
Dr. Calabi chatted with Albert Einstein in 1950, met fellow math whiz John Nash at Princeton University, and was interviewed by famed theoretical physicist J. Robert Oppenheimer when he applied for membership at the Institute for Advanced Study’s School of Mathematics. Through it all, the long nights of study and eventual celebrity, he never seemed to lose what his daughter, Nora, called “that twinkle in his eye.”
“To follow your hobbies as a profession is the extraordinary luck I’ve had in my life,” Dr. Calabi told colleague Claude LeBrun in 2019. He added: “Learning is a confusing process, and the real learning takes place after you’ve sort of digested the information. Learning is a digestive process, in a creative way.”
Lawson said: “I can’t remember a conversation with Gene in which I did not learn something fascinating.”
Dr. Calabi was recruited to Penn in 1964 and became its Thomas A. Scott Professor of Mathematics in 1967. He retired in 1994 but continued teaching an occasional class and receiving visitors in his office.
He published his 865-page Collected Works in 2021, and many of his students have gone on to their own decorated careers. He was a member of the National Academy of Sciences and active with the European Mathematical Society in Finland, the Institute of Advanced Scientific Studies in France, the International Congress of Mathematicians, and other groups.
He won a 1991 Leroy P. Steele Prize from the American Mathematical Society for his “fundamental work on global differential geometry.” He was named an AMS fellow in 2012, and received Italy’s highest honor, the Order of Merit, in 2022.
He and his wife of 71 years, Giuliana, joined the New York-based Simons Foundation to establish the Calabi-Simons Professorship in Mathematics and Biology at Penn, and school officials called him “a visionary mathematician whose work has had profound implications beyond his own field of complex differential geometry.”
Penn awarded him an honorary doctorate of science in 2014, and colleagues said then: “You reshaped the [mathematics] department, recruited accomplished faculty, and trained a new generation of leaders.”
Eugenio Davide Calabi was born May 11, 1923. He and his family fled Italy when he was 15, spent a year in France, and arrived in the United States in 1939. He was drafted in 1943 and spent two and half years in the Army as a translator and interpreter in France and Germany.
He earned a bachelor’s degree in chemical engineering from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1946, master’s degree in mathematics at the University of Illinois-Urbana in 1947, and doctorate in mathematics at Princeton in 1950. He worked at Louisiana State University, the California Institute of Technology, and the University of Minnesota before joining Penn.
He met Giuliana Segre when he was at Princeton and told his family it was “love at first sight.” They married in 1952, had daughter Nora and son Joseph, and lived in Wynnewood for nearly 50 years before moving to Beaumont.
Described by friends and family as humble, modest, gentle, caring, and generous, Dr. Calabi loved babies and flashed his subtle sense of humor often. His favorite birthdays fell on prime numbers, and friends said he often took circuitous routes when driving to avoid traffic lights.
One time, he said in an interview, he got a bill for $3.14 and wrote the symbol for Pi, of which 3.14 is the approximate value, on the check. Someone at the bank, he said, penciled in the 3.14 next to his symbol.
When he wasn’t thinking of numbers, Dr. Calabi enjoyed puzzles, hiking, and hunting for mushrooms. He played viola with the Lower Merion Symphony and donated his own treasured Italian violin to the Philadelphia Orchestra. It is known there as the Calabi violin and played by concertmaster David Kim.
He also supported the Philadelphia Museum of Art, the Jewish Federation, and other civic and cultural organizations. “He was a light in everybody’s life,” his daughter said. ”He was always available for comfort and advice. He was my go-to guy.”
In addition to his wife and children, Dr. Calabi is survived by four grandchildren, two great-grandchildren, and other relatives. Two sisters and a brother died earlier.
Private services were Wednesday, Sept. 27.
Donations in his name may be made to the Calabi-Simons Professorship in Mathematics and Biology, University of Pennsylvania School of Arts and Sciences Office of Advancement, Attn: Laura Weber, 3600 Market St., Suite 300, Philadelphia, Pa. 19104.