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

¹ Department of Physics of Sapienza University of Rome – Piazzale Aldo Moro 5, 00185 Rome, Italy
² Department of Physics and Astronomy – University of California Riverside, CA 92507, USA
³ Department of Physics – University of Pisa, Largo Bruno Pontecorvo 3, 56127 Pisa, Italy
⁴ Centro Fermi, Museo Storico della Fisica e Centro Studi e Ricerche “Enrico Fermi” – Rome, Italy – Piazza del Viminale 1, 00184 Rome, Italy

^a e-mail: Adele.LaRana@roma1.infn.it

Received: 19 April 2020
Received in final form: 11 June 2020
Published online: 5 August 2020

Abstract

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.