Levi-Civita

Lat: 23.7°S, Long: 143.4°E, Diam: 121 km, Depth: km, Rükl: (farside)

Left: Clementine, Right: Apollo 15: AS15-M-0878

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Named for Tullio Levi-Civita (March 29, 1873 - December 29, 1941), an Italian mathematician, most famous for his work on absolute differential calculus (tensor calculus) and its applications to the theory of relativity. His work included foundational papers in both pure and applied mathematics, celestial mechanics (notably on the three-body problem) and hydrodynamics. Levi-Civita's series of papers on the problem of a static gravitational field were also discussed in his 1915-1917 correspondence with Einstein.
Levi-Civita was among the long list of farside names approved by the IAU in 1970 and published in Menzel, 1971.
In the planning for Apollo 8, the first manned circumlunar mission (1968), this crater (which did not then have an official name) was referred to informally as "White", a name subsequently approved for use in connection with a completely different farside crater (source: Phil Stooke's LPOD).