Vito Volterra was an Italian mathematician and physicist (1860–1940). He was born in Anconda, a port city in central Italy. His name is familiar today, especially to biology and ecology students, because it appears in the name of the best-known predatory-prey model, the Lokta-Volterra model. Volterra came up with the model (independently from Lokta) in the context of studying fish catches in the Adriatic Sea.
Volterra is also remarkable in that he was one of the few professors who opposed the Fascist regime of Benito Mussolini. As a result of his opposition, he had to live abroad, returning to Italy shortly before his death in 1940.
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