Guglielmo Libri Carucci dalla Sommaja

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Count Guglielmo Libri Carucci dalla Sommaja (born January 1, 1803 in Florence, Italy; died September 28, 1869, in Fiesole, Italy) was an Italian mathematician and a book thief.

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 noted by Charles 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. 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. He then became a professor at the College of France, was elected to the Academy of Sciences and given the "Legion d'Honneur".

Between 1838 and 1841 Count Libri wrote and published a four volumes "History of the Mathematical Sciences in Italy from the Renaissance to the 17th Century". 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 Francois 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. Tipped off, he 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 Merimee (1803-1870), argued in his favor and was prosecuted for this. Merimee, the author among other stories and plays of "Carmen" (on which Georges Bizet opera is based), 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.

In 1868, when his health started to deteriorate, Libri returned to Florence and died in Fiesole on September 28,1869. Incidentally, some 2,000 manuscripts which Libri had stolen in Italy and sold in London to Lord Beltram were repurchased by the Italian Government in 1884 and are back in the Biblioteca Medicea Laurenziana. "Libri" in Italian means "Books".