Pasquale Sconzo was born in Palermo, Italy in June of 1908 to Geatano and Antonina Sconzo. He attended the Technical School at Palermo from 1918 to 1922 and then the Scientific Lyceum until 1926. He then enrolled in the University of Palermo from which he received a Ph.D. equivalent in 1931. In 1934 Sconzo received a Humboldt Fellowship to undertake post-graduate studies in Heidelberg, Germany where he remained until 1936, when he married Elisabeth Schlag. In 1937 he began teaching at the Instituto Nautico Savona and the following year moved to the Naval College at Venice where he taught until 1940.

From 1940 to 1943 Sconzo served as an Artillery Captain in Libya and elsewhere. During World War II he was a guest scientist at the Konigstuhl Observatory in Heidelberg, Germany. After the war, Sconzo taught briefly at the Instituto Nautico Camogli in Genoa before moving to La Plata, Argentina in 1947 where he became a professor at the Universidad Nacional de La Plata Astronomical Observatory. In 1955 he left La Plata and lived briefly in the United States on a Fulbright Scholarship before returning to Italy to teach in Genoa and at the Galileo Galilei Institute in Rome until 1959.

In November of 1959 Sconzo became an assistant professor at Georgetown University where he remained for one year before joining the IBM Cambridge Space Systems Group. He remained at IBM Cambridge as Chief Scientist and Astronomer for twelve years, working on complex problems related to the Apollo space program and other federal contracts. Sconzo retired from IBM in 1972 and became a visiting scientist at the European Space Research Organization for several years.

Sconzo died in Arlington, Massachusetts on March 14, 1994.

Sources:

American Men of Science

"Pasquale Sconzo, Mathematician Noted for Orbital Calculations; at 85: [City Edition]," Boston Globe, March 18, 1994.

IBM report on Sconzo.