Annibale Giordano was born 20 September 1769 in Ottaviano –
San Giuseppe Vesuviano, to an educated middle-class family. His father Michele was a doctor who served both the king
Ferdinand I of the Two Sicilies, and the Medici
princes of Ottaviano. As a teenager, Annibale Giordano attended the school of
Nicolò Fergola, a brilliant mathematician from Naples. In 1789, the year of the
French Revolution, he was appointed professor at the
Nunziatella Military School, thus becoming a colleague of the chemist Carlo Lauberg, a
freemason. In 1790, Giordano and Lauberg established an
Accademia di chimica e matematica in Naples, which became a club for Neapolitan progressives and Freemasons; among the members were
Mario Pagano, Emanuele De Deo,
Francesco Lomonaco, Vincenzo De Filippis and
Luigi de' Medici di Ottajano, then regent of the
Gran Corte della Vicaria court. In 1792 Giordano and Lauberg wrote the
Principi analitici delle Matematiche, in which they theorized the political commitment of mathematicians; this essay was Annibale Giordano's last scientific work. In December 1792, Giordano was one of the scholars who met the French admiral
Latouche-Tréville; starting from those meetings, a conspiracy began, sketched in the birth in August 1793 of the
Società Patriottica Napoletana, a
Jacobin association, but structured on the model of
Masonic lodges, with a hierarchy such that some secrets were known only by high-ranking members. In February 1794, the
Società Patriottica Napoletana split into two
clubs. The
ROMO (an acronym for
Repubblica o Morte, i.e. "Republic or Death" was more radical and led by , among whose members were also Emanuele De Deo, and Vincenzo Vitaliani). The
LOMO (acronym for "Libertà o Morte", i.e. "Freedom or Death"), was more moderate and willing to accept a
constitutional monarchy, and was led by
Rocco Lentini, and joined by Annibale Giordano). On 21 March 1794, authorities discovered the organization through a report by a certain Donato Froncillo; in the subsequent trial, some adherents of the
ROMO (De Deo, Galiani and Vincenzo Vitaliani) were sentenced to death and executed, while Giordano was sentenced to twenty years and that he gave the names of over 250 members, including
Luigi de' Medici, who was incarcerated. Giordano fled to France where he worked as
cadastral surveyor in the French department of
Aube; in 1824, he became a naturalized French citizen and changed his surname to Jourdan. == Mathematical advancements ==