Carlo Bonferroni studied in Turin, held a post as assistant professor at the Turin Polytechnic, and then in 1923 took up the chair of financial mathematics at the Economics Institute in Bari. In 1933 he transferred to Florence where he held his chair until his death. Many further details and bibliography can be found in the obituary [9], and [6] and [1] (all three in Italian) and a brief encyclopaedia entry [7].
Bonferroni wrote two articles which cover his inequalities, the 1935 article [4] is directed to a specific application, life assurance, whereas the 1936 article [5] is more abstract. Note that many sources cite both of these as having been published in 1936, but this is an error caused, I believe, by following secondary sources rather than reading the originals.
His articles are more of a contribution to probability theory than to simultaneous statistical inference, and the reader in search of a convenient reference for such use might prefer [8]. A contrasting view of the value of adjustment in multiple comparisons can be found in [10]. As usual in statistics the name can be considered inappropriate (an example of Stigler's law [12]) as the usual statistical simultaneous inference relies only on Boole's inequality [11].
Apart from these he also had interests in the foundations of probability. Two relevant articles are an inaugural lecture in [3] and a more formal article published earlier, but written about the same time [2]. He developed a strongly frequentist view of probability denying that subjectivist views can even be the subject of mathematical probability.
Article by: Michael Dewey, Nottingham
September 1998