Giovanni Battimelli

20th Century Physics: Essays and Recollections: A Selection of Historical Writings by Edoardo Amaldi

From nuclei to particles - 50 years of physics in Italy - nuclear physics in Rome and the Italian scientific milieu up to 1939, postwar Italian physics Euroean physicists and their institutions - physics at the beginning of the century, prominent personalities of 20th-century physics, European physics and CERN.

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.

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.

Enrico Fermi and the Dolomites

Summer vacations in the Dolomites were a tradition among the professors of the Faculty of Mathematical and Physical Sciences at the University of Roma since the end of the XIX century. Beyond the academic walls, people like Tullio Levi-Civita, Federigo Enriques and Ugo Amaldi sr., together with their families, were meeting friends and colleagues in Cortina, San Vito, Dobbiaco, Vigo di Fassa and Selva, enjoying trekking together with scientific discussions. The tradition was transmitted to the next generations, in particular in the first half of the XX century, and the group of via Panisperna was directly connected: Edoardo Amaldi, the son of the mathematician Ugo sr., rented at least during two summers, in 1925 and in 1949, and in the winter of 1960, a house in San Vito di Cadore, and almost every year in the Dolomites; Enrico Fermi was a frequent guest. Many important steps in modern physics, in particular the development of the Fermi-Dirac statistics and the Fermi theory of beta decay, are related to scientific discussions held in the region of the Dolomites.