Gregorio Ricci-Curbastro (12 January 1853 – 6 August 1925) was an Italian mathematician born in Lugo di Romagna. He is most famous as the inventor of tensor calculus, although the advent of tensor calculus in dynamics goes back to Lagrange, who originated the general treatment of a dynamical system, and to Riemann, who was the first to think geometry in an arbitrary number of dimensions. He was also influenced by the works of Christoffel and of Lipschitz on the quadratic forms. In fact, it was essentially the Christoffel’s idea of covariant derivation that allowed Ricci-Curbastro to make the greatest progress.
With his former student Tullio Levi-Civita, Ricci wrote his most famous single publication, a pioneering work on the calculus of tensors. This appears to be the only time that Ricci-Curbastro used the shortened form of his name in a publication, and continues to cause confusion.
Ricci-Curbastro also published important works in other fields, including a book on higher algebra and infinitesimal analysis, and papers on the theory of real numbers, an area in which he extended the research begun by Dedekind.