| This study traces the revival of Italian mathematics in the second half of the nineteenth century in an institutional, historical, political, and mathematical context with a focus on algebraic developments. Specifically, it shows that the Unification of Italy in 1861 represented a political, educational, and mathematical turning point and that, parallel to a political unification, a mathematical unification also took place in Italy during the second half of the nineteenth century.;The analysis opens with a survey of the state of mathematics in the first half of the nineteenth century. Against this backdrop, it examines the changes that took place after 1861: the reform of the Italian educational system, the establishment and reorganization of institutions for higher education, the development of scientific academies and societies, the foundation of specialized mathematical journals, the efforts of a group of scholars who worked in political, educational, and mathematical venues in order to improve the state of mathematics in unified Italy. Moreover, within the context of infrastructure-building for mathematics, this dissertation also specifically considers the practice of algebraic research over the period 1850-1914 by tracing the contributions of Italian mathematicians to the theory of algebraic equations and substitutions, group theory, and Galois theory; invariant theory and the theory of forms; and the theory of determinants. It shows that, contrary to conventional wisdom, Italy supported a wide range of algebraic research from north to south. |
