Guglielmo Libri Carucci dalla Sommaja (born January 1, 1803 in Florence, Italy; died September 28, 1869, in Fiesole, Italy) was an Italian count and mathematician, who became known for his love and subsequent theft of ancient and precious manuscripts.[1]

Appointed the Inspector of Libraries in France, Libri began stealing the books he was responsible for, fleeing to England when caught, along with 30,000 books and manuscripts inside 18 trunks. He was sentenced in France to 10 years in jail in absentia; some of the stolen works were returned when he died, but many remained missing.

In June 2010, one of the documents he stole—a letter from the French philosopher René Descartes, dated May 27, 1641—was handed back to France after being found in a library in Haverford College, in Pennsylvania. The letter had been donated by the widow of a college alumnus in 1902, and was discovered only after a philosopher from Utrecht University in the Netherlands read about it on the Internet, and contacted the college to tell them what they had in their library; the existence of the letter had been known to philosophers, but not its contents. The letter was written by Descartes to Father Marin Mersenne who had been overseeing the publication of Descartes's Meditations on First Philosophy.[1]

Life

In Italy and France

He entered the University of Pisa in 1816, starting to study law, but soon switching to mathematics. He graduated in 1820, his first works being praised by Babbage, Cauchy, and Gauss.

In 1823, at the age of 20, he was appointed Professor of Mathematical Physics at Pisa, but did not relish teaching and the following year went on sabbatical leave, traveling to Paris. There, he became friends with many of the most prominent French mathematicians of the day, including Laplace, Poisson, Ampère, Fourier and Arago. Upon his return to Italy, he became involved in politics, conspiring with the secret society of the Carbonari to advocate a liberal constitution in the Grand Duchy of Tuscany.

Faced with arrest and prosecution, he fled to France and in 1833 became a French citizen. His friend Arago, the secretary of the Académie des sciences helped him obtain professorship at the Collège de France in 1833, succeeding the great mathematician Legendre and in and 1834 he was elected as assistant professor in the calculus of probabilities at the Sorbonne. He was elected to the Academy and given the Légion d'honneur.

Although his friendship with Arago helped him obtain some these prestigious posts, eventually their relationship went sour and by 1835 they had become bitter enemies. Since Arago was a powerful figure in French mathematics at the time, many others in the mathematical establishment also became Libri's enemies, including Liouville; the two would attack each other at every opportunity in meetings of the Academy.

Between 1838 and 1841 Count Libri wrote and published a four volume "History of the Mathematical Sciences in Italy from the Renaissance of literature to the 17th Century"[2]. His original research was partially based on some 1800 manuscripts and books by Galileo, Fermat, Descartes, Leibniz, and other luminaries which he claimed to have collected throughout his career; in fact, some of these, as it turned out, had been stolen in Florence from the Biblioteca Medicea Laurenziana.

In 1841, Libri obtained an appointment as Chief Inspector of French Libraries through his friendship with influential French Chief of Police François Guizot. This job, involving in part the cataloguing of valuable books and precious manuscripts allowed Count Libri to indulge his collecting passion by continuing to steal them, and although he was under suspicion, he was not investigated or charged. In 1848, as France was involved in a liberal revolution and the government fell, a warrant was issued for Libri's arrest.

In England

However he received a tip-off and fled to London, shipping 18 large trunks of books and manuscripts, about 30,000 items, before doing so. In London, he was assisted by Antonio Panizzi, the Director of the British Museum Library, and was able to convince many that his problems in France had arisen because he was an Italian, not because the allegations against him had any substance.

On June 22, 1850, he was, however, found guilty of theft by a French Court and sentenced in absentia to 10 years imprisonment. His friend, the archaeologist and writer Prosper Mérimée (1803-1870), argued in his favor and was prosecuted for this. Mérimée, the author among other stories and plays of "Carmen", had been convinced of Libri's innocence when the Count had told him that the missing French books and manuscripts must have been forgeries since the ones he had were the originals.

Although Libri had arrived in England with nothing but his books and manuscripts, he led a good life and acted the part of society lion. His money came from selling his books. Two large sales held in 1861 reputedly netted him over a million francs; this at a time when the average daily wage for a workman was about four francs.

Return to Italy, death and aftermath

In 1868, when his health started to deteriorate, Libri returned to Florence and died in Fiesole on September 28, 1869.

Fate of the stolen manuscripts

Some 2,000 manuscripts which Libri had stolen in Italy and sold in London to Lord Ashburnham were repurchased by the Italian Government in 1884 and are back in the Biblioteca Medicea Laurenziana. In 2010, a one of the stolen items, a letter from Descartes to Father Marin Mersenne concerning the publication of “Meditations on First Philosophy”, was discovered in the library of Haverford College. The college has returned the letter to the Institut de France on June 8, 2010.[3]

References

1. ^ a b Willsher, Kim. "Descartes letter found by web surfer heads home to France", The Guardian, June 22, 2010.
2. ^ "Histoire des sciences mathématiques en Italie, depuis la renaissance des lettres jusqu'à la fin du dix-septième siècle"
3. ^ « Une lettre inconnue de Descartes retrouvée ». Institut de France, février 2010, 4 pp. Canal Académie « Une lettre de Descartes volée au XIXe siècle, rendue à la Bibliothèque de l’Institut de France ». « Retransmission de la cérémonie du 8 juin 2010 ». NY Times article

External links

Count Guglielmo Libri Carucci dalla Sommaja at the School of Mathematics and Statistics, University of St Andrews, Scotland.