Giovanni Battista Beccaria - physicist and mathematician

Monk who explained how lightning conductors work

Beccaria was Professor of Physics
at the University of Turin

The physicist, mathematician and Piarist monk Giovanni Battista Beccaria, whose work with electricity confirmed and expanded upon the discoveries of the American polymath and Founding Father Benjamin Franklin, died in Turin on this day in 1781.

At the age of 64 he had been ill and in pain for some years but was working right up to his death on a treatise on meteors.

For much of his life, Beccaria had been occupied in the study of electricity with particular focus on the discoveries made by Franklin, with whom he corresponded regularly.

He successfully explained such things as the workings of the Leyden Jar and the Franklin square, two devices in which static electricity could be captured and stored, and why pointed objects could discharge electrified objects at a distance.

He was also able to explain why lightning rods, or lightning conductors, protect a building by providing a path along which electricity generated in the air in the form of lightning can be directed safely to earth. 

Beccaria wrote and published a complete treatise on Franklin’s electrical theory, called Dell’ Elettricismo naturale ed artificiale (On Natural and Artificial Electricity) in 1753.

Born in Mondovì, a town in Piedmont about 80km (50 miles) south of Turin in the province of Cuneo, in October, 1716, Beccaria entered the religious Order of the Pious Schools or Piarists at the age of 16. 

The Piarists had been founded in 1617 by Spanish priest Joseph Calasanz. It is the oldest religious order in the world dedicated to education.  After studying under the order, he taught grammar, rhetoric and mathematics. 

Benjamin Franklin, with whom
Beccaria often corresponded

He studied mathematics with such success that the order appointed him professor of experimental physics, first in the Scuole Pie of Palermo and then in Rome. 

Beccaria acquired a reputation as an effective teacher but found himself at the centre of controversy in 1748, when he was appointed by royal authority as Professor of Physics at the University of Turin. This was a coveted position and Beccaria was subjected to complaints from rivals that he was not sufficiently qualified for the role. 

In response, his sponsors came up with an idea to silence his critics. They had heard about the work of the French physicist, Thomas-François Dalibard, whose experiment at Marly-la-Ville, north of Paris, had demonstrated that lightning was a form of electricity, and urged Beccaria to make this new field his own area of expertise.

Beccaria followed their advice and set about writing and publishing a complete treatise on the electrical theory of Benjamin Franklin, news of whose work with electricity in the United States had reached Europe in 1751. Beccaria’s Dell’ Elettricismo naturale ed artificiale was published only two years later. 

Devoting himself to research on atmospheric electricity, Beccaria made use of kites, rockets, and iron wire in conducting his experiments. 

Using an early electroscope developed by the English physicist William Henley, Beccaria noted that, in broken or stormy weather, positive and negative electrification were detected, whereas in calm, serene weather, positive dominated.  He attributed the forked character of lightning to the resistance of the air and theorised that the spontaneous rupturing of the shoes worn by a man struck by a lightning bolt was the result of the "moisture of the feet flying into vapour". 

The cover page of
Beccaria's treatise

Beccaria was also among the first to recognize and clearly state that the electrical charge on a conductor is confined to the surface and endorse Franklin’s views about the preventive and protective functions of lightning conductors. He was the first Italian to extract sparks from a conductor pointed to the sky.

His work confirmed the American’s finding that pointed rods could discharge electricity in the air, which eventually led to such rods being attached to tall buildings for the protection in an electrical storm of individuals on the ground. The King of Sardinia, Charles Emmanuel III, was so impressed that he asked Beccaria to install a lightning rod on the Royal Palace, 

In 1755, Beccaria was elected Fellow of the Royal Society of London. His work Dell'elettricismo artificiale e naturale was translated into English in 1778. Franklin described the treatise as “one of the best pieces on the subject in any language.”

Piazza Maggiore, the main square of the historic
Piedmont town of Mondovì, near Cuneo

Travel tip:

The historic town - and ancient city - of Mondovì is located in the Monregalese Hills at the foot of the southern Alps, where the Piedmont and Liguria regions meet. It is built on two levels, the upper being divided into several rioni (ancient quarters). The lower town developed from the 18th century when railway connections saw industries emerge. A funicular railway links the Breo quarter with Piazza, the oldest part of the town. Although the origins of Mondovì date back to the Roman Empire, it flourished during the Middle Ages, occupying a strategic position at the intersection of trade routes between Piedmont and the Mediterranean coast.  Piazza was founded around 1198 by the inhabitants of three hamlets, who joined forces to protect their community from outside threats. Nonetheless, the town was seized by the Bishops of Asti, followed by Charles I of Anjou, the Angevins, the Visconti, the Marquisate of Montferrat, the Acaja and, from 1418, the House of Savoy, who would leave an indelible mark on the character and architecture of the town, fortifying its walls and constructing buildings that still stand today.  In the mid-16th century, when it was occupied by France, Mondovì was the largest city in Piedmont and the seat of the region’s first university.

Cuneo's elegant Piazza Galimberti is one of the
largest squares in the whole of Italy

Travel tip:

The city of Cuneo, which developed at the confluence of the Stura and Gesso rivers about 28km (17 miles) west of Mondovì, is set out in a grid system with an elegant central square, Piazza Galimberti, one of the largest squares in Italy, after Piazza del Plebiscito in Naples. Surrounded by neo-classical buildings, it has a large statue of Giuseppe Barbaroux, the author of the Albertine Statute that formed the constitution of the Kingdom of Sardinia-Piedmont in 1848. The square is named after Duccio Galimberti, one of the heroes of the Italian resistance in the Second World War.   Cuneo had been acquired by the Duchy of Savoy in 1382 and remained an important stronghold of the Savoy state for many centuries.  Cuneo is the home of a chocolate confection called Cuneesi al rhum - small meringues with dark chocolate coating and a rum-based chocolate filling. They were the creation of Andrea Arione, whose bar and pasticceria, Caffè Arione, is still located in Piazza Galimberti.

Also on this day:

1508: The death of da Vinci painting subject Lucrezia Crivelli

1944: The birth of television journalist Bruno Vespa

1956: The birth of screenwriter and director Giuseppe Tornatore

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Ulisse Dini – mathematician and politician

Patriotic professor was proud to serve the new Kingdom of Italy

Ulisse Dini went to Paris to further
his mathematical education

The mathematician Ulisse Dini, who wrote many books and papers based on his research and came up with original theories that advanced the knowledge in his field, died on this day in 1918 in Pisa.

Now regarded as one of the 19th century's most important contributors to the evolution of mathematics, Dini was also active as a politician and was elected to Pisa city council before becoming a member of the parliament of the new Kingdom of Italy. 

His political views were shaped by the changing landscape of Italy while he was growing up, as the country moved closer to unification, and he was always keen to help his local area and his country.

Originally intending to become a teacher, Dini, who was born in Pisa in 1845 when the city was part of the Grand Duchy of Tuscany, attended the Scuola Superiore in Pisa, a teachers’ college, where one of his teachers was the mathematician, Enrico Betti.

However, in 1865, Dini received a scholarship that enabled him to go to Paris to further his mathematical studies, where he was taught by the French mathematicians, Charles Hermite and Joseph Bertrand. He produced seven mathematical publications based on the research he was able to do while living in Paris.

The following year he was appointed by the University of Pisa to teach algebra and geodesy, the science of measuring and representing the geometry, gravity, and spatial orientation of the earth in temporally varying 3D. 

Dini succeeded Betti as professor for analysis and geometry at the university in 1871. He was rettore - rector - of Pisa University from 1888 until 1890, and of the Scuola Superiore in Pisa from 1908 until his death. One of his students at Pisa University was the Italian mathematician, Luigi Bianchi.

Enrico Betti was 
Dini's teacher

Professor Dini is particularly known for his contribution to the branch of mathematics known as real analysis, which studies the behaviours of real numbers, sequences and series of real numbers, and real functions. He collected his theories in his book, ‘Fondamenti per la teorica delle funzioni di variabili reali’, a collection of ideas that were entirely originated by himself. 

Despite his heavy academic workload, Dini had entered politics by the age of 25, when he was elected to the city council in Pisa.

When Dini was 13, the fight had begun to win back areas of the country from the Austrian occupying forces. Within a few years, forces representing the Kingdom of Sardinia had gained control of many areas in central Italy. Victor Emmanuel II of Sardinia later assumed the title of King of Italy, and Giuseppe Garibaldi and his 1000 volunteers set out to unify the country, starting by invading Sicily. With his forces, Garibaldi gradually moved northwards up the peninsula and this led to the official proclamation of the Kingdom of Italy in 1861.

Ulisse Dini is remembered by historians and writers as an upright, honest, and kind man, and for being devoted to the well-being of his city and country. He divided his time between teaching and research and public service, and in 1892 he became a senator in the Italian parliament. 

In the field of mathematical analysis, he is remembered for being the originator of Dini criterion and Implicit function theorem. He was considered one of the most important European mathematicians of the 19th century and he was elected as an honorary member of the London Mathematical Society.

After his death, Dini was buried in Pisa’s monumental cemetery, Campo Santo, on the northern edge of the Campo dei Miracoli. There is a statue commemorating his life in Via Ulisse Dini in the city’s historic centre. 

The 15th century Palazzo della Sapienza, built by
the Medici family, remains the heart of the university

Travel tip: 

The University of Pisa, founded in 1343, is one of the oldest in Italy and rivals Rome’s Sapienza University for the title of the country’s best. Various scholars place its origins in the 11th century, although those claims have never been verified. What is certain is that the papal seal “In Supremae dignitatis”, issued by Pope Clement VI on 3 September 1343, granted the Studium in Pisa the title of Studium Generale. At the outset in Pisa, lessons in Theology, Civil Law, Canon Law and Medicine were established. In its early years, the university struggled to survive at times, but investment from the Medici family in the 15th century saw the construction of the Palazzo della Sapienza, still the centre of the present-day university. Cosimo I de’ Medici instituted programmes to improve the quality of teaching and later Galileo Galilei, universally seen as the founder of modern science, was initially a student and then a teacher of Mathematics at the university. Today, Pisa has a student population of around 50,000, who give the city a vibrant cafe and bar scene.

The bronze statue of Ulisse 
Dini was finished in 1927

Travel tip: 

The bronze sculpture of Ulisse Dini in Via Ulisse Dini was created in 1927 by Leonardo Bistolfi, a sculptor from Casale Monferrato in Piedmont, whose work was praised for its likeness to the subject.  Via Ulisse Dini goes from Borgo Stretto to Piazza dei Cavalieri and Dini’s statue stands beside the Church of Santo Stefano dei Cavalieri. Once a stream flanked by wooden houses belonging to the city’s higher social classes, the street subsequently became a centre for forges and metalworkers’ workshops. Some of the stone arches lining the modern street date back to the 12th century.  Aside from the Campo dei Miracoli, the biggest attraction of which is the city’s world famous leaning bell tower, Pisa offers visitors a wealth of well-preserved Romanesque buildings, Gothic churches and Renaissance piazzas.

Also on this day:

312: The Battle of Ponte Milvio

1639: The death of composer Stefano Landi

1922: Mussolini’s Fascists march on Rome

1963: The birth of singer-songwriter Eros Ramazzotti

1973: The death of actor and illustrator Sergio Tòfano

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Italy’s first nuclear reactor opens

Facility based on pioneer Enrico Fermi’s historic Chicago-Pile series

The Ispra-1 reactor was the first nuclear
reactor to be built on Italian soil

The first nuclear reactor to be built on Italian soil was inaugurated on this day in 1959 at Ispra, a small town on the eastern shore of Lago Maggiore.

The facility, which preceded the first generation of nuclear power plants serving the need for clean, reliable and plentiful electricity sources for industrial and domestic use, was built purely for research purposes.

It was opened four years ahead of the country’s first commercial nuclear plant, at Latina in Lazio.

The 5 megawatt Ispra-1 research reactor, as it was titled, was modelled on the latest version of the Chicago-Pile 5 series developed by Enrico Fermi, the Rome-born nuclear physicist who created the world’s first nuclear reactor, the Chicago-Pile 1, following his discovery that if uranium neutrons were emitted into fissioning uranium, they could split other uranium atoms, setting off a chain reaction that would release enormous amounts of energy.

The Ispra-1 reactor was built by Italy’s National Nuclear Research Council. It was officially transferred to the European Community in March 1961, becoming a Joint Research Centre (JRC) of the European Commission. 

It was used for studies and research on core physics, new materials for the construction of nuclear power reactors, as well as neutron fluxes and their interaction with living matter.

Until the 1960s, much of Italy’s electricity had been generated from renewable sources. Although the first power plant in continental Europe, opened in Milan in 1883, was carbon-fuelled, the country’s abundance of mountains and lakes enabled it to develop a huge hydroelectric power sector.

The Trino Vercellese nuclear plant was named
after the Italian nuclear pioneer Enrico Fermi

Fossil fuels began to take over in the 1960s to meet the needs of a growing population but there was a common belief that nuclear energy could provide, within only a few years, safely and economically, all the power that Italy needed. 

By 1964, three nuclear power plants had been built, all approximately 50km (31 miles) from major cities. They were at Trino Vercellese, north of Turin, at Sessa Aurunca in Campania, north of Naples, and at Latina, south of Rome.

Yet after the electricity sector in Italy was nationalised in 1962, investment in nuclear stalled. It was not until 1978 that a fourth nuclear power station, at Caorso in Emilia-Romagna, was completed.  The 1973 world oil crisis had prompted another round of enthusiastic plans for the nuclear sector, but again they were ultimately downgraded.

The most significant setback of all followed the Chernobyl disaster of 1986, fallout from which affected parts of northern Italy and was blamed for a decline in birth rate in 1987. The Italian government organised a referendum to gauge public feeling about the future of nuclear power, the results of which led to a decision to close two plants and terminate work on another.

Another referendum in 2011 following a nuclear accident in Japan confirmed that public opinion had not shifted and a new company was created to take charge of decommissioning all nuclear sites in Italy, including the research facility at Ispra.

The Cattedrale di San Marco is an
example of Latina's architecture

Travel tip:

Latina, where one of Italy’s now-decommissioned nuclear power stations was opened in 1963, is a city built during the Fascist era of the 1920s and 1930s when Mussolini’s government fulfilled a pledge to drain the inhospitable, mosquito-ridden Pontine Marshes, visitors to which frequently became infected with malaria. Built on that reclaimed land, and originally called Littoria when it was established in 1932, its stands as a monument to the architectural style that typified the era, which combined some elements of classicism, with its preponderance of columns and arches, with the stark lines of 1920s and 30s rationalism. It has a large number of monuments and edifices, including a town hall with a tall clock tower and a cathedral, designed by architects such as Marcello Piacentini and Angiolo Mazzoni. Renamed Latina in 1946, it has grown into a substantial city with a population of 126,000, making it the second largest city in Lazio after Rome.

Ispra's coastal pathways are popular with
visitors to the Lago Maggiore town

Travel tip:

Ispra, which sits on the eastern shore of Lago Maggiore about 25km (16 miles) west of its provincial capital, Varese, is an area popular with walkers for its lakeside footpaths, including the poetically named passeggiata dell’amore, and with golfers for the Parco del Golfo della Quassa. The Joint Research Centre still exists, despite the decommissioning of the nuclear plant. It comprises the Institute for the Protection and the Security of the Citizen (IPSC), the Institute for Environment and Sustainability (IES) and the Institute for Health and Consumer Protection (IHCP). The site itself is an area of natural preservation, covering an area of 157 hectares (390 acres) of pine, birch, oak and chestnut trees.

Also on this day:

1446: The death of architect Filippo Brunelleschi

1452: The birth of Renaissance genius Leonardo da Vinci

1754: The death of mathematician Jacopo Riccati

1882: The birth of anti-Fascist politician Giovanni Amendola

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Andrew Viterbi – electrical engineer and businessman

The amazing life of 'the father of the mobile telephone'

Even at the age of 88, Viterbi remains actively
involved in the scientific community

Andrew Viterbi, who invented the Viterbi algorithm and co-founded the American multinational corporation Qualcomm, was born Andrea Giacomo Viterbi on this day in 1935 in Bergamo in the Lombardy region of Italy.

The Viterbi algorithm is still used widely in cellular phones and other communication devices for error correcting codes as well as for speech recognition, DNA analysis and other applications. Viterbi also helped to develop the Code Division Multiple Access standard for cell phone networks.

He is recognised in Italy as ‘il padre del telefonino’ - the father of the mobile telephone.

Viterbi’s father, Achille, was director of Bergamo Hospital’s ophthalmology department, and his mother, Maria Luria, came from a prominent family in Piedmont and had a teaching degree. But after Mussolini introduced his new racial laws in Italy before the start of World War II, the couple, who were both Jewish, were deprived of their position and could no longer make a living to support their family.

They had planned to sail to the United States on 1 September, 1939, but after receiving a tip-off alerting them to possible danger, they secretly escaped two weeks early and were able to land safely in New York, where a member of their extended family already lived.   They then moved to Boston, where Andrea’s name was anglicised as Andrew after he was naturalised as an American.

Andrew Viterbi pictured in 2005 with his late wife,
Erna, who assisted him in his philanthropic causes

As Andrew Viterbi, he attended the Boston Latin School and entered Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1952 to study electrical engineering. After qualifying, he worked at Raytheon and then the Jet Propulsion Laboratory at Pasadena, where he worked on telemetry for unmanned space missions and helped to develop the ‘phase-locked loop.’ At the same time, he was studying for a PhD in digital communications at the University of Southern California and graduated from there in 1963.

He was awarded academic positions at the University of California and, in 1967, he proposed the Viterbi algorithm to decode convolutionally encoded data, a ground breaking mathematical formula for eliminating signal interference. This allowed for effective cellular communication, digital satellite broadcast receivers, and deep space telemetry.

With Irwin Jacobs, Viterbi was the co-founder of Linkabit Corporation in 1968, and Qualcomm Inc in 1985, which became one of the most important communications companies worldwide. He became president of the venture capital company, The Viterbi Group in 2003, which invests in emerging businesses that are pioneering innovative technologies in the area of wireless communications.

Viterbi has received many awards for his invention of the Viterbi algorithm and a computer centre and an engineering school have been named after him. His algorithm paved the way for the widespread use of cellular technology, which changed the way people communicate worldwide.

In 2003 he was awarded an honorary degree in computer science by La Sapienza University of Rome and in 2007 an honorary degree in electrical engineering by the University in his native city of Bergamo. He has written two internationally respected books about digital communications and coding.

Viterbi in 1958 married Erna Finci, a Jewish refugee who had arrived in the United States from Sarajevo in the former Yugoslavia. Her family had been deported from an Italian occupied zone in Sarajevo to Parma in Italy, where they were interned. They were saved from being sent to an extermination camp by the residents of Gramignazzo di Sissa, the village when they were interned, and were looked after by a local family when the Germans advanced into Italy, who hid them in their vineyard. Other Italians helped them to walk across the Alps into Switzerland, where they stayed until after the war.

The couple had three children. Erna, who helped organise Viterbi’s multiple acts of philanthropy, died in 2015. Their charitable donations included $52 million to the University of Southern California, where the engineering school was renamed the Andrew and Erna Viterbi School of Engineering. 

Bergamo's Città Alta is protected by an
imposing wall built by the Venetians

Travel tip:

Bergamo in Lombardy is a beautiful city with an upper and lower town that are separated by impressive fortifications. The magical upper town - the Città Alta - has gems of mediaeval and Renaissance architecture surrounded by the impressive 16th century walls, which were built by the Venetians who ruled at the time. Outside the walls, the elegant Città Bassa, which grew up on the plain below, has some buildings that date back to the 15th century as well as imposing architecture added in the 19th and 20th centuries. While the Città Alta is the draw for many tourists, the lower town also has art galleries, churches and theatres and a wealth of good restaurants and smart shops to enjoy.

The Rocca dei Terzi with its
89ft central tower

Travel tip:

Gramignazzo, the village near Parma where Viterbi’s future wife, Erna, was saved with her family from being shipped to a Nazi extermination camp, is a frazione of the municipality of Sissa, in farming country on the south bank of the Po river in Emilia Romagna. Sissa has a restored castle, the Rocca dei Terzi, which dates back to the 11th century and is notable for a 27-metre (89ft) tower added in the 16th century. The village is host every November to a festival known as the Sapori del Maiale, celebrating products made from pork, including many varieties of sausage and salami as well as roast pork dishes such as porchetta, typically made of rolled loin or belly pork stuffed with herbs.

Also on this day:

1454: The death of explorer Amerigo Vespucci

1809: The birth of statesman and winemaker Bettino Ricasoli

1842: The premiere of Giuseppe Verdi’s Nabucco

1908: The founding of football club Internazionale

1948: The birth of politician Emma Bonino

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Alessandro Cruto - inventor

Produced light bulb hailed as better than Edison’s

Alessandro Cruto was always
fascinated by science

The inventor Alessandro Cruto, whose attempts to create artificial diamonds instead led him to develop a light bulb that outperformed that of his contemporary, Thomas Edison, was born on this day in 1847 in Piossasco, a village near Turin.

Younger than his American counterpart by just three months, Cruto hit upon his idea after attending a conference held by Galileo Ferraris, the pioneer of alternating current, where Edison’s attempts to find a suitable filament for incandescent light bulbs were discussed.

Cruto eventually opened a factory that eventually made up to 1,000 light bulbs per day but quit the company after seven years to return to his first love, inventing.

The son of a construction foreman, Cruto enrolled at the University of Turin to study architecture but was more interested in attending physics and chemistry lectures, eager to advance his knowledge. It was after attending one of these lectures that he hit upon the idea that he could produce artificial diamonds by crystallising carbon.

In 1872, he opened a small workshop in his home village. In the September of the following year, his experiments resulted in him creating a dense carbon material that was hard enough to scratch glass. But it did not resemble anything that could be recognised as a synthetic diamond.

An example of the light
bulbs created by Cruto

He continued to study this material for many years. In 1879, on his 32nd birthday, he attended the conference hosted by Ferraris and realised the graphite he had created might be a suitable material for an effective filament for an electric light bulb.

Cruto's process resulted in the deposition of graphite on thin platinum filaments in the presence of gaseous hydrocarbons. Subjected to high temperatures, this created thin filaments of super-pure graphite. 

In 1882, he attended the Electricity Expo at Munich, where his graphite filaments, which produced a strong, white light, outperformed Edison’s carbon-coated bamboo filaments, which gave off a rather less effective yellow light and burnt out more quickly. 

The following year, Cruto’s bulbs illuminated the centre of Piossasco, enabling his home village to claim to be the first in Italy to be illuminated by electricity, rather than by the dim gas lamps that until then were the sole source of light in Italy’s towns and cities once the sun had gone down.

After exhibiting again at the Turin Expo in 1884, he generated sufficient interest that he decided to produce bulbs on a commercial scale.

Cruto established a manufacturing plant in order
to make light bulbs on a commercial scale

A year later, having found a suitable site for a production facility a short distance from Piossasco at Alpignano, he opened his factory under the name of A Cruto and Company.

With limited financial backing, the odds against his company becoming the dominant player in the light bulb market even in Italy were long. With much more financial muscle, the Italian Edison Company was too big a competitor. Edison installed a thermo-electric power station in Milan and supplied the bulbs for all the properties it served.

Cruto remained at the helm of his business until 1889 and only when its output hit 1,000 light bulbs a day did he take a step back. In 1893, after some major disagreements with managers he had appointed in his place, he resigned in order to return to his workshop to focus on new inventions.

The factory was sold a number of times, went bankrupt and was eventually acquired by Philips in 1927.  The Cruto name remained in use for some years after Alessandro had ceased to be involved, with examples in existence that were manufactured as late as 1902.

Cruto spent the rest of his days dividing his time between his family and his workshop. He died in 1908, his important contribution to the development of artificial light largely forgotten.

The Church of San Vito dominates the parish
of the same name in Piossasco

Travel tip:

Piossasco, where Alessandro Cruto was born and opened his first workshop, is a town not far from Turin, halfway between Turin and the beautiful and elegant town of Pinerolo, famous for being the ‘home’ of panettone and other enriched breads. A village when Cruto was growing up, it has expanded into a town of more than 18,000 people. Situated about 20km (12 miles) southwest of the Piedmont capital, Piossasco overlooks the beautiful Parco Naturale del Monte San Giorgio, and has some notable historic buildings such as the Castello Ai Nove Merli di Piossasco, which has medieval origins and occupies a panoramic position commanding sweeping views of the Pinerolese and Valsusa areas. The San Vito parish of Piossasco is notable for the church of the same name, which evolved from a former monastery and was largely built at the end of the 16th century with a Baroque facade added in the 19th century.

Turin is famous for its Savoy palaces, 
including the 16th century Palazzo Reale

Travel tip:

The city of Turin, once the capital of Italy and traditionally seat of the Savoy dynasty, is best known for its royal palaces but tends to be overlooked by visitors to Italy, especially new ones, who flock first to Rome, Florence, Venice and Milan. Yet as an elegant, stylish and sophisticated city, Turin has much to commend it, from its many historic cafés to 12 miles of arcaded streets and some of the finest restaurants in Piedmont. To enjoy Turin’s café culture, head for Via Po, Turin’s famous promenade linking Piazza Vittorio Veneto with Piazza Castello, or nearby Piazza San Carlo, one of the city’s main squares. In the 19th century, these cafès were popular with writers, artists, philosophers, musicians and politicians among others, who would meet to discuss the affairs of the day.

Also on this day:

1494: The birth of painter Jacopo Carucci da Pontormo

1671: The birth of Gian Gastone de' Medici, the seventh and last Grand Duke of Tuscany

1796: The birth of Charles Emmanuel IV, King of Sardinia

1949: The birth of film producer and football club owner Aurelio De Laurentiis

1981: The birth of celebrity chef Simone Rugiati

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Gino Strada - surgeon and charity founder

‘Maestro of humanity’ built hospitals for war victims

Gino Strada's charity has helped more
than 11 million people worldwide

The surgeon and founder of the medical and humanitarian charity Emergency, Gino Strada, was born on this day in 1948 in Sesto San Giovanni, a town that is now effectively a suburb of Milan.

Emergency has provided free healthcare to more than 11 million people in 19 different countries, including locations severely affected by conflict such as Afghanistan, Iraq, and Yemen.  It also operates in Eritrea, Sierra Leone, Uganda, Sudan, Cambodia, Serbia, Nicaragua and Sri Lanka.

The hospitals set up by the organisation - some designed with the help of Strada’s friend, the world-renowned architect Renzo Piano - are built to the highest standards, with the aim of providing world-class treatments and after-care. Strada, who was said himself to have performed more than 30,000 operations on direct or indirect victims of conflict, insisted that the hospitals in which his European volunteers worked had to be places where “you would be happy to have one of your family members treated”,

When Strada died in 2021, among the many tributes paid to him was one by the then president of the European parliament, David Sassoli, who described him as the ‘maestro of humanity’.

The son of a steelworker, Strada attended the Liceo Classico Giosuè Carducci, a high school specialising in science near Milano Centrale railway station. He then studied medicine and trauma surgery at the University of Milan, where he graduated in 1978, before training as a heart-lung transplant surgeon in the United States and South Africa.

The Emergency organisation's logo has become
a familiar sight in 19 countries since 1994

He returned to Italy to work at a hospital in Rho, to the northwest of Milan. A committed peace activist, he soon focussed his attention on trauma surgery and in particular the treatment of war victims.

In 1988, he began to work as a surgeon with the International Committee of the Red Cross in various conflict zones, including Pakistan, Ethiopia, Peru, Afghanistan, Thailand, Djibouti, Somalia and Bosnia.

He founded Emergency in 1994, along with his then-wife, Teresa, and with the support of colleagues. They provided their first medical services in Rwanda in the wake of the genocide there, when an 800,000 people were killed by Hutu extremists. 

Funded mainly through private donations, Emergency has cared for the civilian victims of land mines, improvised explosive devices, bombings, suicide attacks and of the diseases that flourish in communities without access to proper sanitation and medical services as a result of conflict.

Strada worked in Italy at the
height of the Covid-19 pandemic

The organisation also cared for Ebola patients in Sierra Leone and, in Khartoum, Sudan, children whose hearts were damaged by rheumatic fever.

Emergency also set up a hospital in Afghanistan's Panjshir Valley, followed by others in Kabul and Lashkar Gah. Rigorously neutral in all conflicts, Strada spent several periods living in Afghanistan, where he once negotiated with Taliban leader Mohammed Omar and the leaders of rival Northern Alliance to ensure the safety of Emergency patients on both sides of the conflict. 

Strada preferred Emergency to remain non-political, but he found it impossible at times to be neutral. He opposed Italy’s involvement in Kosovo in 1999 and was an outspoken critic of the US-led invasion of Iraq in 2003. When Italy banned the manufacture, sale and export of anti-personnel landmines in 1997, it was in part due to a lobbying campaign by Emergency.

After decades taking on medical challenges in remote corners of the world, Strada found that the coronavirus pandemic created a demand for Emergency’s services in his native Italy, the first western country to be ravaged by the disease in 2020. The organisation provided medical care in the hardest-hit cities, as well as helping with delivering medicine and provisions for vulnerable people during lockdowns and handing out free food other essentials for Italians impacted by the economic consequences of the pandemic.

Widowed in 2009 when his wife, Teresa, died, Strada remarried in June 2021 to Simonetta Gola, Emergency's communications manager, but less than two months after the wedding he fell victim to a heart attack while on holiday in France and sadly passed away at the age of 73.

Although he had a history of heart trouble, his death came as a shock to many as he had shown no sign of slowing down.  His daughter by his first marriage, Cecilia, is a former president of Emergency. The current president is Rossella Miccio.

The suburb of Sesto San Giovanni in Milan has
transitioned from industrial to business centre

Travel tip:

Sesto San Giovanni, where Gino Strada was born, is the northernmost point on the Milan M1 metro line. In the 1920s it had a population of just over 15,000 but began to expand as an industrial centre, becoming the base for several large companies in the steel and motor industries but also the Campari drinks company.  The years after the Second World War saw a huge influx of migrants from other parts of Italy, attracted by the job possibilities. Today, the area is a busy suburb with more than 85,000 inhabitants. The current employers are more in the service sector, such as the telecommunications company, WIND.

The facade of Milano Centrale railway station
was designed by Ulisse Stacchini in 1931

Travel tip:

Milano Centrale station, close to where Gino Strada went to high school, is one of Italy’s busiest rail hubs. It has 24 platforms and handles about 320,000 passengers per day, using approximately 500 trains. The station is an important stop on the north-south route between Bologna and Salerno and also has trains running daily to international destinations including Bern, Lugano, Geneva, Zürich, Paris, Vienna, Barcelona and Munich. It was designed by the architect Ulisse Stacchini, a champion of Liberty style Art Nouveau designs, who also designed the stadium that evolved into the city's iconic Stadio Giuseppe Meazza, joint home of Milan's two major football clubs, Internazionale and AC Milan.

Also on this day:

753 BC: The founding of the city of Rome

1574: The death of Tuscan leader Cosimo I de' Medici

1922: The death of castrato singer Alessandro Moreschi

1930: The birth of actress Silvana Mangano

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The L’Aquila Earthquake

Shock measuring 6.3 magnitude killed more than 300

Scenes of devastation confronted
rescue workers after the quake

The central Italy region of Abruzzo suffered a major disaster on this day in 2009 when an earthquake with a magnitude of 6.3 caused extensive damage and considerable loss of life in the city of L’Aquila and surrounding villages.

The main shock struck at 3.32am, when many of the victims would have been asleep, although there had been two smaller tremors the day before in an area with a long history of seismic turbulence, giving rise to speculation that a major quake was imminent.

The epicentre was only a little outside L’Aquila, a city with a population of about 70,000, damaging up to 11,000 buildings in the 13th century city.  A total of 309 people lost their lives and such was the scale of devastation that up to 65,000 people were left homeless in the city and neighbouring villages.

It was the deadliest earthquake to hit Italy since the Irpinia quake in Campania killed almost 2,500 people in 1980.

The dead in L’Aquila, a university city, included 55 students killed when their halls of residence collapsed.  The 309 victims were of 11 different nationalities, including Italians.  The main shock was felt 92 km (57 miles) away in the Italian capital, Rome.

Many of L'Aquila's medieval buildings were badly damaged, including the Basilica of Saint Bernardino of Siena, the city’s largest Renaissance church, and the Basilica di Santa Maria di Collemaggio, while the dome of the 18th-century church of Anime Sante in Piazza Duomo collapsed. Porta Napoli, the oldest gate to the city, was completely destroyed.

A wrecked local government building
near the centre of L'Aquila

The collapse of the cupola of the 18th-century Baroque church of St Augustine - previously destroyed in a 1703 earthquake - damaged L'Aquila's state archives. 

But it was not only the city’s historical centre that suffered. Many of L'Aquila's modern buildings - even those thought to be earthquake-proof - were not able to withstand the shaking, including a dormitory at the University of L'Aquila that collapsed, and a new wing of the city’s main hospital, built only nine years earlier.  Shoddy construction was blamed, leaving the city much more vulnerable than it should have been, in the opinion of some experts.

Yet those held to account in the inquiries that followed were not building contractors but six scientists and a government official - members of a government commission for risk assessment - who were placed on trial for manslaughter on the grounds that they had not properly communicated the increased risk following the smaller tremors that preceded the 6 April quake. 

In October 2012,  a court found that the seven individuals were indeed guilty of manslaughter and each was handed a six-year prison sentence, although those convictions were overturned on appeal two years later.

The church of Anime Sante, the dome of which
collapsed, undergoing reconstruction in 2011

Of the vast number of residents left homeless, some 40,000 people were accommodated in tented camps and a further 10,000 were housed in hotels on the coast. 

Prime minister Silvio Berlusconi pledged to rehouse all of the homeless and provide ample funds to rebuild the city, yet reconstruction work was slow, mired in political wrangling, bureaucracy and corruption.  The tented camps remained in place for far longer than planned and even 10 years on, some 2,000 families were still living in prefabricated, temporary accommodation.

Many of the damaged houses in the historic centre of the city are still unrepaired yet some residents moved back into them anyway. Parts of the centre are beginning to look as they did before the quake, after meticulously reconstruction of many historic buildings, although others remain clad in scaffolding and some areas still resemble buildings sites, with cranes towering above the rooftops. 

The Basilica di Santa Maria di Collemaggio, 
with its distinctive pink and white facade

Travel tip:

The capital of the Abruzzo region, L’Aquila was built in the 13th century on a hill within the valley of the Aterno river. Its construction was started by Frederick II, Holy Roman Emperor, and completed by his son, Conrad IV of Germany. It was destroyed by Conrad’s brother, Manfred in 1259, but rebuilt by Charles I of Anjou, who surrounded it with walls.  Many of the buildings that attracted visitors to the city before 2009 have been restored, including the 12th century Basilica di Santa Maria di Collemaggio, with its distinctive exterior of alternating pink and white stone blocks, and the 15th century Basilica of San Bernardino, which reopened in 2015 after six years of restoration work that cost around €40 million.

L'Aquila's elegant Piazza del Duomo, the heart
of the city, as it looked in 2007

Travel tip:

Apart from its religious buildings, L’Aquila is attractive for its maze of narrow streets, lined with Baroque and Renaissance buildings, and its elegant squares. As home to the University of L'Aquila, it has a lively atmosphere and many cultural attractions, including a symphony orchestra, a fine-arts academy, a state conservatory, a film institute and a repertory theatre. Situated in a valley in the Apennines in the shadow of the Gran Sasso massif, it is also close to a number of ski resorts. 

Also on this day:

1483: The birth of painter and architect Raphael

1901: The birth of social activist Pier Giorgio Frassati

1926: The birth of tenor and actor Sergio Franchi

1957: The birth of race-walking twins Maurizio and Giorgio Damilano

(Picture credits: rescuers by University College London; local government office by TheWiz83; church of Anime Sante and Piazza del Duomo by RaeBo; Basilica by Stemonitis; all via Wikimedia Commons)

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Maria Gaetana Agnesi – mathematician

Brilliant scholar gave her time and money to the poor

Maria Gaetana Agnesi learned
seven languages by the age of 11

Maria Gaetana Agnesi, the first woman to write a mathematics handbook, was born on this day in 1718 in Milan.

Maria became a mathematician, philosopher, theologian and humanitarian and was also the first woman to be appointed as a mathematics professor at a university.

She was one of at least 21 children born to Pietro Agnesi, a wealthy man whose family had made their money from silk production. Her mother was his first wife, Anna Fortunato Brivio, who was from a noble Milanese family.

Maria was soon recognised as a child prodigy, who could speak Italian and French by the time she was five and had learnt Greek, Hebrew, Spanish, German and Latin by the time she was 11.

When she became ill at the age of 12, it was thought to have been because of excessive studying and reading, but after she was prescribed vigorous dancing and horse riding to improve her health, she suffered convulsions and was then advised to moderate her activities.

By the time Maria was 14 she was studying ballistics and geometry. Her father regularly invited learned men to his house to listen to her read and to discuss philosophical questions with her.

The cover page of Agnesi's Instituzioni
 analitiche ad uso della gioventu italiana

After Maria’s mother died, her father remarried twice and Maria was given the task of teaching all her siblings and half-siblings.

This stopped her from fulfilling her wish to enter a convent.  Instead, her father agreed to let her live away from society and devote herself to the study of mathematics.

In 1740 she began studying differential and integral calculus with esteemed Italian mathematician Ramiro Rampinelli.

By 1748 Maria had published her Instituzioni analitiche ad uso della gioventù italiana. She said this was to give a systematic illustration of the different results and theorems of infinitesimal calculus. The work was translated into French and English and Maria received letters and gifts from the Habsburg Empress Maria Theresa and Pope Benedict XIV.

In the book, Maria discusses a curve that had been studied earlier by the mathematician Luigi Guido Grandi. He had called the curve ‘versoria,’ the Latin word for a rope that turns a sail, because that is what it reminded him of.  This was mistranslated as the word ‘witch’ in the English version and so the curve became known as ‘The Witch of Agnesi’.

The bust of  Agnesi at the
Palazzo di Brera in Milan

In 1750 Pope Benedict XIV appointed Maria to the chair of mathematics and natural philosophy and physics at Bologna University, although she never actually taught there. She was the second woman in the world to be granted a professorship at a university, Laura Bassi, an Italian physicist being the first.

After the death of her father in 1752, Maria finally had the chance to study theology. She then worked with the poor, sick and homeless, founding a home for the elderly in Milan, where she went to live.

In January 1799, Maria Gaetana Agnesi died at the age of 80. She was buried in a mass grave for the poor along with 15 other bodies.

An asteroid, 16765 Agnesi, a crater on Venus and a brandy are all named after her, as well as the mathematical curve, the Witch of Agnesi.

The Villa Agnesi Albertoni at Montevecchia in the province
of Lecco, where Maria and her family spent the summer

Travel tip:

You can visit the Villa Agnesi Albertoni, where Maria and her family spent time during the summer, which is in Largo Maria Gaetana Agnesi at Montevecchia in the province of Lecco, about 30 kilometres (19 miles) northeast of Milan. The villa has been preserved in the rococo style in which it was built during the 17th century. Visitors can still see the ‘salotto’, where eminent visitors would discuss philosophy with Maria Gaetana Agnesi and hear one of her sisters, Maria Teresa Agnesi play her own compositions on the harpsichord.

The famous Archiginnasio, the
university's anatomical theatre

Travel tip:

Bologna University, where Maria Gaetana Agnesi was the first woman to be appointed as a mathematics professor, was founded in 1088, making it the oldest university in the world. It attracted popes and kings as well as students of the calibre of Dante, Copernicus and Boccaccio. You can still visit one of the original university buildings in the centre of Bologna, the former anatomy theatre, the Archiginnasio, in Piazza Galvani. It is open Monday to Saturday from 9 am to 1 pm, admission free.

Also on this day:

1915: The birth of film director Mario Monicelli

1945: The birth of business tycoon Massimo Moratti

1974: The birth of singer-songwriter Laura Pausini


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Ascanio Sobrero - chemist

Professor who discovered nitroglycerine

Ascanio Sobrero discovered nitroglycerine during
an experiment in his laboratory at Turin University

The chemist Ascanio Sobrero, who discovered of the volatile compound that became known as nitroglycerine, was born on this day in 1812 in Casale Monferrato in Piedmont.

Nitroglycerine has a pharmaceutical use as a vasodilator, improving blood flow in the treatment of angina, but it is more widely known as the key ingredient in explosives such as dynamite and gelignite.

Its commercial potential was exploited not by Sobrero but by Alfred Nobel, the Swedish businessman and philanthropist who gave his name to the annually awarded Nobel Prizes.

Sobrero, aware of how much damage it could cause, had actually warned against nitroglycerine being used outside the laboratory.

Little is known about Sobrero’s early life, apart from his being born in Casale Monferrato, a town about 60km (37 miles) east of Turin.

He studied medicine in Turin and Paris and then chemistry at the University of Giessen in Germany, earning his doctorate in 1832. In 1845 he returned to the University of Turin, becoming a professor there.

Alfred Nobel, pictured at around the time he met
Sobrero in Paris in 1850

Sobrero had acquired some knowledge of explosives from the French chemist Théophile-Jules Pelouze, who had taught at the University of Turin while he was a student.

Around 1846 or 1847, during research, Sobrero experimented by adding glycerol to a mixture of concentrated nitric and sulfuric acids. The result was a colorless, oily liquid with a sweet, burning taste.

When he tried heating a drop in a test tube, it exploded. The fragments of glass scarred Sobrero’s face and hands. The liquid’s volatility frightened Sobrero so much that he told no one about it for more than a year. After he did finally announce his discovery, which he called pyroglycerine, he wrote to fellow chemists warning against its use, expanding on his misgivings in academic journals.

Nobel, whose family owned an armaments business in St Petersburg, had been, like Sobrero, a student at the University of Turin, albeit somewhat later.  They happened to meet in Paris in 1850.  On learning about Sobrero’s discovery, Nobel became interested in finding a way to control nitroglycerine’s explosive qualities.

It took him many years to achieve that ambition and there were mishaps along the way, not least in 1864, after the family had returned to Sweden from Russia, when an explosion at their factory in Heleneborg, Stockholm, killed five people, including Nobel's younger brother Emil. Undaunted, Nobel continued his work and in 1867 he obtained a patent as the inventor of dynamite. He went on to invent gelignite and ballistite, a predecessor of cordite.

The Nobel family business was still producing dynamite
to Alfred's patented formula in the 1930s

The inventions made Nobel’s fortune. He unfailingly acknowledged Sobrero as the man who had discovered nitroglycerine, although Sobrero sometimes claimed he was not given sufficient recognition.

At other times, by contrast, he gave the impression he would rather Nobel did not mention his name at all.  He was on record as saying: “When I think of all the victims killed during nitroglycerine explosions, and the terrible havoc that has been wreaked, which in all probability will continue to occur in the future, I am almost ashamed to admit to be its discoverer.”

Sobrero died in Turin in 1888, at the age of 75.  He is buried at the cemetery of Cavallermaggiore, about 40km (25 miles) south of Turin.

Piazza Mazzini in Casale Monferrato, which is named
after the revolutionary hero Giuseppe Mazzini

Travel tip:

Situated on the south bank of the Po river, Casale Monferrato is a town of some 36,000 inhabitants based on a former Roman city, later turned into a major citadel by the Gonzaga family. The historic centre is itself centred on Piazza Mazzini, the site of the Roman forum. The square is dominated by an 1843 equestrian statue by Abbondio Sangiorgio of King Charles Albert of Piedmont-Sardinia.  To the east of the square is the Lombard Romanesque cathedral of Sant'Evasio, founded in 742 and rebuilt in the early 12th century, occupying the site of a Roman temple dedicated to Jupiter.  See also the castle on Piazza Castello, a fortress that probably dates from 1000, built to a quadrilateral plan with corner towers and a moat.

An internal quadrangle at the University of Turin, where
Sobrero was a student and later a professor

Travel tip:

The University of Turin, where Sobrero studied and taught, is one of the oldest universities in Europe, founded in 1406 by Prince Ludovico di Savoia. It consistently ranks among the top five universities in Italy and is an important centre for research. The university departments are spread around 13 facilities, with the main university buildings in Via Giuseppe Verdi, close to Turin’s famous Mole Antonelliana.

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