Emilio Spedicato
Encyclopedia
Emilio Spedicato is full professor of operations research
Operations research
Operations research is an interdisciplinary mathematical science that focuses on the effective use of technology by organizations...

 at the University of Bergamo
University of Bergamo
The Bergamo University is a university located in Bergamo, Italy. It was founded in 1968 and is organized in 5 Faculties.-History:The University of Bergamo, founded in 1968, was originally named "The Institute of Foreign Languages and Literature"...

 in Italy
Italy
Italy , officially the Italian Republic languages]] under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages. In each of these, Italy's official name is as follows:;;;;;;;;), is a unitary parliamentary republic in South-Central Europe. To the north it borders France, Switzerland, Austria and...

. He attended the Liceo Classico Manzoni, obtaining (with Enrico Camporesi, now medical professor in Florida) the highest score in northern Italy at the final exams. He graduated in physics at Milan University and was the first non-Chinese to receive a PhD in a mathematical discipline in China, at Dalian University of Technology
Dalian University of Technology
Dalian University of Technology , colloquially known in Chinese as Dagong , is located in Dalian, Liaoning, People's Republic of China and directly administered by the state Ministry of Education.-Introduction:...

. Starting in 1969, he worked for seven years at CISE, a nuclear research center near Milano. He also spent two years in the United Kingdom, University of Essex
University of Essex
The University of Essex is a British campus university whose original and largest campus is near the town of Colchester, England. Established in 1963 and receiving its Royal Charter in 1965...

, and the United States, at Stanford University
Stanford University
The Leland Stanford Junior University, commonly referred to as Stanford University or Stanford, is a private research university on an campus located near Palo Alto, California. It is situated in the northwestern Santa Clara Valley on the San Francisco Peninsula, approximately northwest of San...

. He then moved to the University of Bergamo
University of Bergamo
The Bergamo University is a university located in Bergamo, Italy. It was founded in 1968 and is organized in 5 Faculties.-History:The University of Bergamo, founded in 1968, was originally named "The Institute of Foreign Languages and Literature"...

 as a professor in operations research and was for many years director of its mathematics department.

Disciplines

He has been active in different disciplines, as shown by his list of about 500 papers, of which some 300 in mathematics.

Quasi-Newton methods

In mathematics he worked ten years in the field of Quasi-Newton method
Quasi-Newton method
In optimization, quasi-Newton methods are algorithms for finding local maxima and minima of functions. Quasi-Newton methods are based on...

s, obtaining the first results on optimal conditioning and invariancy to nonlinear scaling.

ABS methods

Then, motivated by a seminar of Jozsef Abaffy, he developed within an international collaboration the new field of ABS
ABS methods
ABS methods, where the acronym contains the initials of Jozsef Abaffy, Charles G. Broyden and Emilio Spedicato, have been developed since 1981 to generate a large class of algorithms for the following applications:...

 (Abaffy-Broyden-Spedicato) methods. These are based on the little known rank-one reducing matrix iteration due to Jeno Egervary
Jenő Egerváry
Jenő Egerváry was a Hungarian mathematician.-Biography:Egerváry was born in Debrecen in 1891. In 1914, he received his doctorate at the Pázmány Péter University in Budapest, where he studied under the supervision of Lipót Fejér...

, a great Hungarian mathematician who committed suicide after hostility from communist bureaucrats. The work on ABS methods started in 1981 and is still continued. It has involved mainly Hungarians (Abaffy, Galantai, Jeney,…), Chinese (Deng, Zhu, Xia, Zhang, Huang, Li…) and Iranians (Mahdavi-Amiri, Esmaeili, Mirnia….). It has produced over 400 papers, three international conferences in China and two monograph
Monograph
A monograph is a work of writing upon a single subject, usually by a single author.It is often a scholarly essay or learned treatise, and may be released in the manner of a book or journal article. It is by definition a single document that forms a complete text in itself...

s: one in 1989 by Abaffy and Spedicato, based upon some 60 papers, and another in 1998 by Xia and Zhang, based upon some 250 papers. A third monograph is envisaged.

The main results by ABS methods include:
  • unification of algorithms for linear systems and linearly constrained optimization
    Linear programming
    Linear programming is a mathematical method for determining a way to achieve the best outcome in a given mathematical model for some list of requirements represented as linear relationships...

  • improvement of the classic method of Gauss for linear system, by reducing memory and eliminating pivoting; the obtained method has also a natural application to the simplex algorithm
    Simplex algorithm
    In mathematical optimization, Dantzig's simplex algorithm is a popular algorithm for linear programming. The journal Computing in Science and Engineering listed it as one of the top 10 algorithms of the twentieth century....

     for linear programming
    Linear programming
    Linear programming is a mathematical method for determining a way to achieve the best outcome in a given mathematical model for some list of requirements represented as linear relationships...

    , where it can be up one order faster than the best of other methods
  • derivation of algorithms for nonlinear equations that are more efficient than Newton's method
    Newton's method
    In numerical analysis, Newton's method , named after Isaac Newton and Joseph Raphson, is a method for finding successively better approximations to the roots of a real-valued function. The algorithm is first in the class of Householder's methods, succeeded by Halley's method...

     in memory, stepwise convergence, without requiring nonsingularity of Jacobian
    Jacobian
    In vector calculus, the Jacobian matrix is the matrix of all first-order partial derivatives of a vector- or scalar-valued function with respect to another vector. Suppose F : Rn → Rm is a function from Euclidean n-space to Euclidean m-space...

     at solution
  • derivation of a general algorithm for linear Diophantine equations, i.e. for the linear solvable Hilbert's tenth problem
    Hilbert's tenth problem
    Hilbert's tenth problem is the tenth on the list of Hilbert's problems of 1900. Its statement is as follows:Given a Diophantine equation with any number of unknown quantities and with rational integral numerical coefficients: To devise a process according to which it can be determined in a finite...

    s, with extension to Diophantine inequalities and linear programming
    Linear programming
    Linear programming is a mathematical method for determining a way to achieve the best outcome in a given mathematical model for some list of requirements represented as linear relationships...

    . Here the classic Euler condition for the existence of integer solutions is generalized for the first time from a single equation to a system, and similarly is generalized the method of Rosser.

Applied optimization

Other mathematical work of Spedicato has dealt with applications of optimization to industrial problems, especially to the reduction of fuel consumption and noxious emissions by cars, on data from Alfa Romeo and Fiat.

Mechanics and astronomy

He also has worked in celestial mechanics
Celestial mechanics
Celestial mechanics is the branch of astronomy that deals with the motions of celestial objects. The field applies principles of physics, historically classical mechanics, to astronomical objects such as stars and planets to produce ephemeris data. Orbital mechanics is a subfield which focuses on...

, in particular analyzing the effects of an inversion of the rotation axis of Earth (the results confirm statements in Herodotus
Herodotus
Herodotus was an ancient Greek historian who was born in Halicarnassus, Caria and lived in the 5th century BC . He has been called the "Father of History", and was the first historian known to collect his materials systematically, test their accuracy to a certain extent and arrange them in a...

 and Pomponius Mela
Pomponius Mela
Pomponius Mela, who wrote around AD 43, was the earliest Roman geographer. He was born in Tingentera and died c. AD 45.His short work occupies less than one hundred pages of ordinary print. It is laconic in style and deficient in method, but of pure Latinity, and occasionally relieved by pleasing...

). Work in progress regards a new theory for the origin of the Moon (by capture from a passing by planet) and the study of a super Tunguska explosion
Tunguska event
The Tunguska event, or Tunguska blast or Tunguska explosion, was an enormously powerful explosion that occurred near the Podkamennaya Tunguska River in what is now Krasnoyarsk Krai, Russia, at about 7:14 a.m...

 over northern Germany, which may explain events of Exodus, the Deucalian flood
Deucalion
In Greek mythology Deucalion was a son of Prometheus and Pronoia. The anger of Zeus was ignited by the hubris of the Pelasgians, and he decided to put an end to the Bronze Age. Lycaon, the king of Arcadia, had sacrificed a boy to Zeus, who was appalled by this savage offering...

, etc.

Other interests

Spedicato’s interests also concern ancient history, especially with respect to catastrophic events of extraterrestrial nature, where he has published papers related to Atlantis, Exodus and the Tunguska
Tunguska event
The Tunguska event, or Tunguska blast or Tunguska explosion, was an enormously powerful explosion that occurred near the Podkamennaya Tunguska River in what is now Krasnoyarsk Krai, Russia, at about 7:14 a.m...

-type impacts of 1178 AD over the Pacific. He has also studied problems in biblical and other ancient texts, dealing e.g. with the geography of Eden and Gilgamesh's travels
Epic of Gilgamesh
Epic of Gilgamesh is an epic poem from Mesopotamia and is among the earliest known works of literature. Scholars believe that it originated as a series of Sumerian legends and poems about the protagonist of the story, Gilgamesh king of Uruk, which were fashioned into a longer Akkadian epic much...

, the empire of Solomon, the origin of the Etruscans
Etruscan civilization
Etruscan civilization is the modern English name given to a civilization of ancient Italy in the area corresponding roughly to Tuscany. The ancient Romans called its creators the Tusci or Etrusci...

 within the theory of Alinei
Mario Alinei
Mario Alinei is Professor Emeritus at the University of Utrecht, where he taught from 1959 to 1987, currently living in Impruneta, Italy. He is founder and editor of Quaderni di semantica, a journal of theoretical and applied semantics...

 who has shown their language to be ancient Hungarian.

Finally he has interests in the musical field, started by a contact with prof Taboga, who found a convincing explanation for Mozart
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart , baptismal name Johannes Chrysostomus Wolfgangus Theophilus Mozart , was a prolific and influential composer of the Classical era. He composed over 600 works, many acknowledged as pinnacles of symphonic, concertante, chamber, piano, operatic, and choral music...

's death and showed that Andrea Luchesi
Andrea Luchesi
Andrea Luca Luchesi was an Italian composer.- Biography :Andrea Luchesi was born at Motta di Livenza, near Treviso the eleventh child of Pietro Luchese and Caterina Gottardi. The rather wealthy family descended from groups of noble families who had moved from Lucca to Venice in the 14th century...

, the teacher of Beethoven, played an essential role in the origin of the Wiener Klassik
Classical period (music)
The dates of the Classical Period in Western music are generally accepted as being between about 1750 and 1830. However, the term classical music is used colloquially to describe a variety of Western musical styles from the ninth century to the present, and especially from the sixteenth or...

. These interests have been devoted recently to operatic music, after his discovery that Gigli
Beniamino Gigli
Beniamino Gigli was an Italian opera singer. The most famous tenor of his generation, he was renowned internationally for the great beauty of his voice and the soundness of his vocal technique. Music critics sometimes took him to task, however, for what was perceived to be the over-emotionalism...

 and Pertile
Aureliano Pertile
Aureliano Pertile was an Italian lyric-dramatic tenor. He is considered to have been one of the most exciting operatic artists of the inter-war period, and one of the most important tenors of the entire 20th century.- Life and career :Pertile was born in Montagnana, Northern Italy, 18 days after...

 were family friends. He has met such stars of lyric
Voice type
A voice type is a particular kind of human singing voice perceived as having certain identifying qualities or characteristics. Voice classification is the process by which human voices are evaluated and are thereby designated into voice types...

 as Valdengo
Giuseppe Valdengo
Giuseppe Valdengo was an Italian operatic baritone. Opera News said that, "Although his timbre lacked the innate beauty of some of his baritone contemporaries, Valdengo's performances were invariably satisfying — bold and assured in attack but scrupulously musical."-Biography:Valdengo first...

, Taddei
Giuseppe Taddei
Giuseppe Taddei was an Italian baritone, who performed mostly the operas of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart and Giuseppe Verdi....

, Panerai
Rolando Panerai
Rolando Panerai Italian baritone, particularly associated with the Italian repertory, he enjoyed a long and distinguished career in both comic and dramatic roles.Rolando Panerai was born in Campi Bisenzio, near Florence, Italy....

, Di Stefano
Giuseppe Di Stefano
Giuseppe Di Stefano was an Italian operatic tenor who sang professionally from the late 1940s until the early 1990s. He was known as the "Golden voice" or "The most beautiful voice", as the true successor of Beniamino Gigli...

, Bergonzi
Carlo Bergonzi
Carlo Bergonzi is an Italian operatic tenor. Although he performed and recorded some bel canto and verismo roles, he is above all associated with the operas of Giuseppe Verdi, including a large number of the composer's lesser-known works that he helped revive...

, Prandelli
Giacinto Prandelli
Giacinto Prandelli was an Italian operatic tenor, particularly associated with the Italian and French repertoires.-Life and career:Born in Lumezzane, Italy, Prandelli sang as a boy in a church choir...

, Olivero
Magda Olivero
Magda Olivero is a soprano of the verismo-school of singing. She was born in Saluzzo, Italy. Olivero made her operatic debut in 1932 on Turin radio in Cattozzo’s oratorio I misteri dolorosi. She performed widely and increasingly successfully until 1941, when she married and retired from performing...

, Stella
Antonietta Stella
Antonietta Stella is an Italian operatic soprano, one of the finest Italian spinto sopranos of the 1950s and 1960s, possessing a beautiful and ample voice, and particularly associated with Verdi and Puccini roles.Stella studied at the Accademia Nazionale di Santa Cecilia in Rome, and made her...

, Cerquetti
Anita Cerquetti
Anita Cerquetti is an Italian dramatic soprano who had a short career in the 1950s.Cerquetti was born in Montecosaro, near Macerata, Italy. She was first a student of the violin, she trained eight years with Luigi Mori. After a mere one year of vocal study at the Conservatory of Perugia she made...

 and Maliponte
Adriana Maliponte
Adriana Maliponte is an Italian operatic soprano.Born Adriana Macchiaioli, she moved with her family to France a the age of 14. She studied first at the Mulhouse Conservatory and later in Como with Carmen Melis and made her stage debut at the Teatro Nuovo in Milan in 1958...

, and is presently working on a book devoted to Puccini
Giacomo Puccini
Giacomo Antonio Domenico Michele Secondo Maria Puccini was an Italian composer whose operas, including La bohème, Tosca, Madama Butterfly, and Turandot, are among the most frequently performed in the standard repertoire...

.
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