From Emancipation to Persecution: Aspects and Moments of the Jewish Mathematical Milieu in Turin (1848-1938)

In the 1840s, the Jewish community in Piedmont was given full civil and political rights, including the right to education for both men and women. This gave the start to a process of assimilation that led to the construction of large, well-educated and productive community in Turin of mathematicians that included such important figures as Corrado Segre, Beppo Levi and Alessandro Terracini. The enactment by the Fascist Regime of the racial laws in 1938 shattered that community, causing many who had never thought of themselves as anything but Italian to forge new lives and new ties. The expulsion of Jews from academic and institutional positions led to a re-mobilisation of resources. This paper traces the formation and assimilation of Jewish scientists from 1848 through the enactment of the racial laws, attempts to identify shared traits that characterize them as a community, and examines the consequences of those laws from 1938 until their repeal in 1944.