A number of letters written from 1883 to 1888, exchanged between Professor Giuseppe Veronese, the Minister of the Education, the office of the Dean of Padua University and the Director of the Science Faculty, witnesses not only the idea that started the University of Padua’s collection of mathematical models along with the collection’s importance that it had in the teaching of higher geometry, but also the need of investments and the necessity of finding adequate space to store it.

Veronese’s initial idea, which he expressed in a letter to the Minister in 1883, was to create in Italy, at Padua University, “a workshop where to build models of descriptive geometry (including perspective and basrelief theory), higher geometry, mathematical physics, and rational mechanics''. The Professor believed that it was necessary to support the theoretical proofs with designs and models to develop in the students’ minds insights of geometric space. Veronese especially highlighted the scarcity of models for higher geometry and descriptive geometry and the necessity of them. Some of those models had just been bought by a few Italian Universities, and he suggested building a few laboratories, similar to those existing in Germany and in Paris. The laboratories would allow Italy to make the models needed for researches independently, in order to reduce the expenses to buy them abroad. What’s more, those laboratories would allow students of mathematics and applied engineering to understand complex theories through the construction of the models.

Veronese’s dream to open a workshop in Italy never came true, but in the letters written in 1888 the expenses for the mathematical models for Padua University to buy are considered. The Director of the Faculty of Mathematics highlights the necessity to find an adequate space where to store the collection of models.

In this section of the exhibition, you can see a scan of the letters that are found in the Archive of Padua University and their transcription, taken from the book by Palladino ;Il Fondo di modelli e strumenti matematici antichi dell'Università di Padova e l’iniziativa di Giuseppe Veronese per un laboratorio nazionale italiano.