The Social Uses of Past Science: Celebrating Volta in Fascist Italy

Abstract

On September 11, 1927, a group of 61 physicists from 14 countries met for 7 days in a little town in northern Italy. The group included 12 Nobel prize winners: Niels Bohr, James Franck, Max von Laue, Max Planck, Francis W. Aston, William L. Bragg, Ernest Rutherford, Guglielmo Marconi, Hendrik A. Lorentz, Pieter Zeeman, Arthur H. Compton and Robert A. Millikan. The group also included three men who were to join the Nobel laureates later: Max Born, Werner Heisenberg and Enrico Fermi. The time and place of the meeting were linked to Alessandro Volta, the discoverer of the electric battery: Volta had lived for most of his life and also died in the town, Como, a century earlier.