Vicente Gonçalves

Famous mathematicianAlice Mendes Elsa Cardoso

Biography• Goncalves , JOSÉ VICENTE ( 1896-1985 ) . University

teacher and researcher in mathematics. José Vicente Gonçalves Martins was born in Funchal on 26thAugust 1896 , and died in Lisbon on 2nd August 1985.

• He graduated in Mathematics at the University of Coimbra in 1917, and got a doctorate there in 1921 with a dissertation entitled “About four fundamental propositions of the theory of entire functions”.

• In 1926 he wrote an essay about the theory of Riemannian integrability.

• He was a teacher in Coimbra until 1942, when he moved to the University of Lisbon, where he taught until his retirement in 1966. Between 1947 and 1960, he also taught at the Institute of Economics and Finance.

• Also in Coimbra he published Calculation and Geometry Lessons (1930) and the first edition of his celebrated Higher Algebra Course (1933), which had two more editions, in 1945 and in 1953, remarkable works of rigor and elegance, who have marked generations.

• He also wrote several texts for high schools. He was a member of the Academy of Sciences.

• In 1950 he founded the Journal of the Faculty of Sciences of Lisbon, 2nd Series A - Mathematical Sciences, which he ran until 1966. Demanding and austere personality, Vicente Gonçalves was the central figure in the Portuguese mathematical society for decades.

• His scientific production extends for about a hundred articles, mostly on classical analysis issues. He also left several important works on the History of Mathematics in Portugal.

• On a 1940 work, he gave particular importance to José Anastácio da Cunha’s work on the notion of convergence for series.