The Centro Cultural e de Estudos Superiores Aúthos Pagano (CCESAP) () is a Brazilian cultural institution located in the Alto da Lapa neighborhood in the city of São Paulo. It is a state public organization, maintained by the Secretariat of Culture and Creative Economy of the State of São Paulo (SEC) and administered jointly with a civil society organization (Pensarte Institute).
The CCESAP was founded on May 11, 1982, on the initiative of lawyer Carmela Antonia Danna Pagano, widow of Uruguayan-Brazilian academic Aúthos Pagano (1909–1976), with the aim of preserving the memory and work of the institution's patron. It is based in the couple's former residence, one of the first modernist houses in Brazil, designed by Gregori Warchavchik in 1929 and protected by municipal law since 1978.
The institution preserves Aúthos Pagano's personal library, consisting of more than 10,000 titles, covering areas such as law, economics, statistics, mathematics, astronomy, and physics; in addition to the original furniture, personal objects and works of art that belonged to the academic and his wife. It maintains a permanent agenda of cultural and educational activities, organizing courses, lectures, debates, performances and a choral singing workshop. It is equipped with a small auditorium, with capacity for 60 people.
The patron
Aúthos Pagano was born in Montevideo, Uruguay, on September 21, 1909, and moved with his family to Brazil as a child after his father's death. He graduated in economics at the School of Economic Sciences of Fundação Escola de Comércio Álvares Penteado (FECAP) in 1936, and later became professor and director of this institution. He also took a philosophy course at the School of Philosophy, Sciences and Literature of the University of São Paulo (Faculdade de Filosofia, Ciências e Letras da Universidade de São Paulo FFCL-USP). In 1939, he presented the first PhD thesis in economics defended in Brazil, called "O Coeficiente Instantâneo de Mortalidade", which later earned him an honorary degree from the University of Havana.
Aúthos was for many years a professor at the School of Economic Sciences at the Mackenzie Presbyterian University. He also studied law at the same university, and later earned a PhD in legal sciences from the University of São Paulo and the University of Montevideo. He, in addition, directed the Statistics Division of the Municipality of São Paulo in the 1950s; wrote, as an amateur, articles on astronomy published in several national and foreign journals; and participated in several academies and associations, including The Econometric Tensor Society of Japan, of which he was a representative for many years.
Aúthos has published twelve books and more than 2,500 articles on varied subjects in the fields of economics, statistics, philosophy, law, astronomy, etc. He is the author, among others, of "Lições de Estatística", the most extensive work on the subject ever written in Portuguese and an important basic reference in the statistics teaching in Brazil. It was awarded by the Institute of Actuaries of London in 1956 and widely disseminated in international academia at the time. After his death in 1976, several tributes were paid, including speeches given in the Legislative Assembly of São Paulo and in the Historical and Geographical Institute of São Paulo.
The institution
The CCESAP was created by the initiative of the wife of the institution's patron, the lawyer Carmela Antonia Danna Pagano. After Aúthos' death, Carmela considered donating the collection to the University of São Paulo. The USP, however, had imposed the condition of dispersing the collection, distributing the volumes among its various specialized libraries, which went against Carmela's will to maintain the integrity and identity of the collection, and thus perpetuate her husband's memory and work. She then opted to create a cultural center: a place for studies, research, conferences, and educational activities, to be based in the couple's old residence at Tomé de Sousa Street, in Alto da Lapa, one of the first modernist buildings in São Paulo, designed by Gregori Warchavchik in 1929.