about the early international congresses of applied mechanics

Several authors have discussed the conflict, during and after the first world war, between the internationalist ideology of scientific knowledge and the political commitment of scientists, in particular with regard to the policy of the International Research Council and of its scientific unions. A case study is presented here of an international body which was born during the Twenties (when the polemic between scientists on opposite sides was at its peak) and quickly attained unpredicted success. Preceded by an informal gathering organized by T. von Karman and T. Levi-Civita in Innsbruck in 1922, the International Congress of Applied Mechanics, first held in Delft in 1924, was, at the end of the decade, much more of a live institution than many of the unions tied to the IRC

Masters and students in italian physics between the 19th and the 20th centuries: the Felici-Bartoli-Stracciati-Corbino case

In the second half of the 19th century, a special practice of research and training in physics took shape in Pisa, characterized by a particular attention to theoretical studies and to combining experimental activity with a profound mastery of mathematical tools. This peculiar approach, started by Carlo Matteucci and Ottaviano Mossotti, continued and spread by Riccardo Felici, Enrico Betti, Adolfo Bartoli and Vito Volterra, was quite an exception in the framework generally marked by strict experimentalism and positivist empiricism of the Italian physics cabinets of the time. The present paper highlights a special path connecting this tradition of the Pisan school to the scientific environment that was formed in the early years of the 20th century at the Royal Physical Institute in Via Panisperna in Rome, through the interaction of Orso Mario Corbino with Volterra on one side, and the imprinting left on Corbino by Adolfo Bartoli and his student and collaborator Enrico Stracciati

A reciprocal legitimation: Corrado Gini and statistics in fascist Italy

This article deals with the relationship between science and politics and in particular with the reciprocal legitimation process involving research schools and political regimes. It focuses on the case of Italian statistics during the early twentieth century. Its emergence as both an independent scientific field and a national research school, in fact, went together with the rise of nationalism and the establishment of the fascist regime. The paper uses the biography of Corrado Gini to analyze the process of mutual legitimization between science and politics under fascism. Gini's academic and professional careers show in fact how actors and ideas could compete through their ability to alter the status of the discipline, the technical functions it was assigned, and to attract funds in a changing political context Gini, as an institutional entrepreneur, was able to make his research school hegemonic in Italy by leveraging the need for scientific legitimation of new state policies during World War I and under fascism. The reinterpretation he provided of his career after the end of World War II is crucial both to deconstructing this process and to shedding light on the postwar de-legitimation of Italian statistics

La fisica nel Mezzogiorno

The paper gives an outline of the main contributions to research in physics and of the institutional development of the discipline in Southern Italy from the unification of the country to the immediate post WWII period (circa 1860-1960), focusing on events in the two main research centers, the physics institutes of Palermo and Naples

“Alcuni aspetti dello sviluppo della fisica italiana nel secondo dopoguerra”

A survey of the main developments of the field of fundamental nuclear physics in Italy in the post WWII period is provided, looking both at results in research and at institutional developments, from the foundation of INFN and CERN to the birth of the national laboratory in Frascati

Dreams of a final theory: the failed electromagnetic unification and the origins of relativity

At the end of the 19th century, efforts were made by several researchers to build up a unified foundation for the whole of physics, grounded solely on electromagnetism. Some of the concepts usually associated with relativity were actually born in this context, before 1905. The main features of these pre-Einsteinian theories are briefly presented, and their interaction with relativity is discussed, by virtue of which ideas originated in a largely different frame were adapted and somehow incorporated into the new theory