40 years of history of physics in Italy

In 2021, the Italian Society for the History of Physics and Astronomy (SISFA) celebrates its 40th birthday. The Society, today an institutional member of the ESHS, was founded as the Gruppo Nazionale di Storia della Fisica (GNSF) during two conferences in 1981 (in April and October) at the Collegio Ghislieri in Pavia, and later (1999) became the Società Italiana degli Storici della Fisica e dell'Astronomia. A significant feature of the Society is that it emerged and developed in the physics departments of Italian universities. Since 1981, historians of SISFA have published extensively and have produced over 1,500 contributions in the Proceedings of the yearly national congresses, which have continued in an uninterrupted series.1 On this 40th anniversary, we briefly recount here how the scientific, cultural, and institutional experience of the history of physics was born and developed in Italy, and present a short discussion of its relationships with the community of Italian physicists.

Italian physicists have made pioneering professional contributions to the history of physics. In 1839, the first congress of Italian scientists was inaugurated with an historical overview. After the unification of the country in 1861, within the framework of the institutionalization of the physical sciences (the Italian Society for the Progress of the Sciences [SIPS] was founded in 1862, and the Italian Physical Society [SIF] in 1897), many bibliographical works with a historical perspective appeared, including an extensive volume in 1881 (with 3,000 papers by 700 authors) on Italian contributions to electricity. The publication of the collected works of Galileo (1890–1909) and Volta (1918–1976) owes much to historians with scientific backgrounds. In 1929 in Firenze, the physicist Antonio Garbasso organized the first national exhibition of history of science, with more than 9,000 exhibits submitted from 80 cities. Then in 1930 what is today the Museo Galileo was established in Firenze, followed shortly thereafter by the Museum for the History of the University in Pavia. Vasco Ronchi—an assistant to Garbasso and founder and Director of the National Institute of Optics, as well as author of the interesting Storia della luce (1939)—was the President of the Union internationale d'histoire des sciences between 1953 and 1970, and in 1959 became the first director of Physis, the Italian history of science journal intended to build on the work of Aldo Mieli.

In 1941, the Domus Galilaeana (the Italian Institute of History of Science) was founded in Pisa. The first director was the physicist Sebastiano Timpanaro (senior); the physicist and historian Giovanni Polvani was the President from 1955 to 1970, and played an important role in the professionalization of Italian historians of physics. Indeed, Polvani always emphasized the connection between physics and history of physics, and worked towards overcoming the gap between the two cultures of the humanities and sciences. He was an important Italian scholar, and also devoted himself to historical studies, among which we mention a full scientific biography of Alessandro Volta (1942) and two volumes on Ottaviano Mossotti in 1948 (with Luigi Gabba). Polvani held a number of institutional roles, becoming President of the SIF (1947–1961) and (from 1960) of the National Research Council (CNR), the latter of which he reformed to include the humanities. He organized the celebrations for the 400th anniversary of Galileo's birth and two relevant conferences on the historiography of science in 1966–1967. A new syllabus for physics degrees was approved in 1961 (unification and centralization of the curricula still take place in Italy), and it is certainly thanks to Polvani that history of physics and epistemology were introduced (even if not as compulsory courses). The official announcement asserts that: “the syllabus of History of Physics obviously has to include the evolution of physical thought and of physical theories and not simply the succession of facts and discoveries. It might be introduced gradually, according to the formation of qualified lecturers.”

To achieve this goal, the Domus Galilaeana started a pioneering training activity that owed a lot to Ludovico Geymonat, who held Italy's first chair of philosophy of science and was also instrumental in establishing the first chairs of history of science (in the humanities departments). The success of Geymonat's works and his editorial activities were fundamental to altering the country's cultural landscape. Many of those who became the new Italian academic historians of physics participated in Geymonat's activities at the Domus in 1973–1975.

A second relevant trend is more strictly connected to the students' rebellion of 1968–1969. In the physics departments, many physicists started to criticize the ongoing research and held social and epistemological concerns about physics. The SIF's International Conferences in the early 1970s addressed these new perspectives. The problem at issue was the relation between the objectivity of physics and its historicity. In Italy, in the early 1970s, a cultural war was fought between internalists and externalists: the former following Karl Popper (and, later, Imre Lakatos) and the latter Thomas Kuhn. Even at the end of the decade, there were very few courses on history of physics.

Guido Tagliaferri, assistant to Polvani from 1945, held the chair of experimental physics in Milan from 1960. In 1979, he shifted to the chair of history of physics, the first of its kind in Italy. After the two Pavia conferences of 1981, in 1982 Tagliaferri—who was the author of an interesting Storia della Fisica Quantistica—became the first President (1982–1986) of the newly born GNSF, later affiliated with the CNR and finally transformed into the SISFA. Sections of the Group were initially established in Bologna, Genova, Lecce, Milano, Napoli, Palermo, Parma, Pavia, and Roma, and more scholars were enlisted later. New sections were created in Torino and Padova in 1983, followed by Firenze and Catania. Financial support from the CNR was small, even if it increased threefold between 1982 and 1988. In addition, each section could count on financial support from the Ministry of Education, provided both locally (through the physics departments) and nationally (through the Group). Later, the reorganization of the national financial support system penalized history of physics in favor of bigger research Groups.

From an academic viewpoint, however, the history of physics grew to maturity in the physics departments, starting with two initial additional chairs in Roma and Genova in the 1980s, and reaching about 80 university researchers around the year 2000, though with a very small generational turnover.

Most research projects have focused on the history of 19th- and 20th-century physics, but some have also examined earlier periods. From 1985 to 1994, the Group held its yearly national conference during the SIF national congresses. Noteworthy was the relationship with the European Physical Society: the Interdivisional Group of History of Physics was established in 1989 thanks to an Italian initiative. Italian historians of physics also played a role in the DHST.

In the early 2000s, unfortunately, the activities of SISFA diminished, mostly due to the almost non-existent generational turnover and to the lack of new university positions. However, a progressive improvement started to take place in 2012, aided by renewed enthusiasm, new use of digital technologies, a new website, an online discussion group, a newsletter, a prize for theses and dissertations in history of physics, and rapid publication of the Proceedings, thanks to a collaboration with various Italian university presses. Also important were a financial consolidation of the Society, as well as cooperation with stronger research groups: INFN (nuclear physics), INAF (astrophysics), and societies such as AIF (physics schoolteachers), SISM (history of mathematics), SILFS (logic and philosophy of science), SAIt (astronomy), and SIA (archeoastronomy). SISFA found an ideal international partner in the European Society for the History of Science (ESHS).

Italian historians of physics have always dedicated great attention to two “applied” fields: cultural scientific inheritance and physics education. Several university physics collections have been restored, analyzed, and displayed in university museum systems, and archives and collections of ancient books have been preserved and catalogued. The CNR and the Ministry of Education provided important financial support for many years. In many physics departments, and in many universities, the results of this commitment can be seen and studied. Historians of physics have shown dedication in applying the discipline to physics education. On one hand, they have theoretically analyzed the implications of such an approach, and thus established national and international organizations, conferences, and journals. On the other hand, they run courses for teachers, as part of both pre-service and in-service syllabuses. The results have been astonishingly positive, both at an institutional level and at the level of individual teachers, many of whom have reorganized the collections of old instruments in their schools and produced historically inspired pedagogical reconstructions.

After 40 years, we can say that most of the desired results have been achieved. History of Italian physics from the 18th century onward has been analyzed in detail, as well as some aspects of international debates. Contributions have been made to the foundation of international institutions, journals, and research centers. Italy's scientific cultural heritage has been restored, analyzed, and exhibited. History of physics has been applied to renewing physics education, with considerable success. Despite the very small number of academic positions available today, SISFA members are still very active, showing passion and professionalism in their work aimed to overcome the two cultures gap, while stressing cultural heritage. They continue to demonstrate an ability to write history with a high technical-scientific background and to create an in-depth discussion on these technical-scientific aspects.

(An expanded version of this contribution has been published, in Italian, in Il Nuovo Saggiatore, 2021, 37(1–2), 39–50; available online at https://www.ilnuovosaggiatore.sif.it/article/260)