XLV National Congress of the Italian Society for the History of Physics and Astronomy

9 Sept 2025, 09:00 → 12 Sept 2025, 14:30 Europe/Rome

DIFI-Università di Genova

XLV National Congress of the Italian Society for the History of Physics and Astronomy

The 45th National Congress of the Italian Society for the History of Physics and Astronomy will take place in Genova on 9-12 September 2025.

The main venue will be the Department of Physics of the University of Genova.

The Congress

The Congress is one of a well-established series that SISFA has been organizing yearly since its foundation. It aims at promoting research activities in the history of physics and astronomy in Italy, carried out not only by academic historians but also by independent scholars and school teachers willing to explore the role of the history of physics and astronomy in the present-day teaching of the disciplines. At the same time, the Congress provides an opportunity to strengthen collaborations and establish new links among the members of SISFA and the members of other scholarly societies, as well as researchers working in the same and related fields.

Historians of physics and astronomy are then invited to participate and the invitation is extended to all the scholars and researchers sharing the same kind of interests.

The Congress will host both invited talks and oral communications. The official languages will be both Italian and English.

The SISFA award for the Best Graduate Thesis in History of Physics or History of Astronomy (Premio di Laurea SISFA 2025) will be awarded during the Congress.

Topics

Proposals for oral communications should mainly address the history of physics and astronomy, also in connection with the related areas of mathematics, chemistry, and the history of science and culture. Studies focusing on historical instruments and documentary sources regarding the mentioned fields are also relevant to the purposes of the Congress, as well as the applications of the history of physics and astronomy in science education and museum displays.

Thematic sessions:

Gian Domenico Cassini: 400 anni dalla nascita / Gian Domenico Cassini: 400 Years After his Birth 
Mathematician and astronomer, Gian Domenico Cassini (1625-1712) born in Perinaldo (IM) and educated at the Collegio Gesuita in Genova, was professor of astronomy at the University of Bologna, then astronomer at the Observatoire Royal in Paris (1669-1712), as well as one of the most important astronomers in the XVII century. This session will celebrate the 400th anniversary of Cassini’s birth and intends to focus on the major developments that led to the birth of modern astronomy in the XVI-XVII centuries.

Dalla Vecchia Teoria dei Quanti alla Meccanica Quantistica / From the Old Quantum Theory to Quantum Mechanics
From 1925 onwards some articles appeared in the scientific literature that deeply influenced the development of Quantum Theory. W. Heisenberg, E. Schrödinger, N. Bohr and other physicists were the godfathers of the new Quantum Mechanics. This session aims to analyze the themes and the interpretations of the QM.

La Fisica e il Mare: conoscere, navigare, esplorare / Physics and the Sea: Knowing, Sailing, Exploring
This session will explore the role of physics in relation to the sea, weaving together historical and contemporary perspectives. From cartography intertwining science and art to the physics of tides; from the problem of determining longitude in navigation to the development of instruments such as sextants, clocks and other devices, up to the KM3NeT, the European telescope and its neutrino detectors located at the bottom of the Mediterranean Sea.

Musei, Archivi e collezioni scientifiche di fisica e astronomia in Italia e nel mondo / Museums, Archives, and Scientific Collections of Physics and Astronomy in Italy and Abroad
The historical collections of instruments and documents testify to scientific progress, and they are still resources for teaching and research. This session will give space to Italian and foreign historical collections

Dialogo tra storia, didattica e divulgazione in fisica e astronomia / Dialogue Between History, Teaching and Dissemination in Physics and Astronomy
This session will focus on the connections between science education, public engagement and the history of physics and astronomy.

Registration and abstract submission

The conference is open to both members and non-members, but non-members who have never attended a SISFA conference should also submit their CV to congresso@sisfa.org

To attend the conference it is necessary to be registered. Registration will be open after the acceptance of abstracts. Non-invited speakers have to finalize the registration after paying the conference fee. The conference fee will include lunches and coffee breaks and will be used to partially cover the cost of the publication of the proceedings of the conference that will be published online and open access by FedOAPress.

Titles and abstracts of oral communications should be submitted in English. The length of the abstract should be between 100 and 250 words and include no bibliography. All abstracts will be peer-reviewed on behalf of the SISFA scientific committee.

Grants

Three grants of 350 euros each will be available for young scholars under the age of 35.
Applicants must be up to date with the SISFA 2025 membership fee and submit their abstracts by the deadline, indicating their interest in the grant by checking the appropriate box during the abstract submission process.
Grant recipients whose abstracts are accepted will be required to publish an article in the SISFA proceedings and will be exempt from the Conference fees.

Important Note

To submit an abstract, please use your INDICO or IDEM account. If you do not have one, request it on https://indico.ict.inaf.it/login by writing: For the SISFA Congress in the form webpage. It will be quickly activated.

Per inviare un abstract, usa il tuo account INDICO o IDEM. Se ne fossi sprovvisto, richiedilo su https://indico.ict.inaf.it/login scrivendo nell'apposito modulo: Per il congresso SISFA. Ti sarà attivato rapidamente.

Circulars First Bulletin 45 SISFA Congress.pdf Second_Bulletin 45 SISFA Congress.pdf

Tuesday 9 September

Registrazioni / Registration

Saluti istituzionali di benvenuto / Welcome

Dalla Vecchia Teoria dei Quanti alla Meccanica Quantistica / From the Old Quantum Theory to Quantum Mechanics

1 Angelo Pagano (1956-2024): In Memory

Speakers: Pirrone, Sara (INFN - Sezione di Catania), Pagano, Emanuele (INFN - Laboratori Nazionali del Sud)

10:25 Coffee Break

Dalla Vecchia Teoria dei Quanti alla Meccanica Quantistica / From the Old Quantum Theory to Quantum Mechanics

2 Italian Physicists and the Birth of Quantum Mechanics: From the Stark–Lo Surdo Effect (1913) to 1938

The aim of this talk is to provide a historical reconstruction of the relationship between Italian physics and quantum mechanics during the period from 1913 to 1938.
This timeframe begins with the accidental discovery of a quantum effect on spectral lines by the then-unknown Italian physicist Antonino Lo Surdo—an effect discovered independently and simultaneously by Johannes Stark, later known as the Stark–Lo Surdo effect—and ends in 1938, a year marked by the partial dissolution of the Italian physics community due to both voluntary and forced departures.
This analysis draws on several key indicators. These include:
- the number of papers on "new physics" published in Il Nuovo Cimento, the official journal of the Italian Physical Society (SIF) and the most important Italian scientific periodical of the time;
- the participation of Italian physicists in international conferences (e.g., Solvay Conferences in 1911, 1913, 1921, 1924, 1927, and 1930);
- the organization of major international conferences in Italy by Italian physicists (e.g., the Como Conference in 1927, the Rome Conference in 1931, and the Bologna Conference in 1937);
- and the awarding of prizes by prestigious Italian academies.
The evidence shows that, between 1913 and 1938, Italian physicists were deeply engaged in the development of quantum mechanics. Through both individual efforts and collective initiatives, they progressed from being passive observers to becoming influential contributors to the field.

Speaker: Robotti, Nadia (Centro Studi e Ricerche Enrico Fermi, Roma)

3 Heisenberg’s 1925 “Umdeutung” Paper: A Commented Translation from the Physicist’s Perspective

The year 2025 marks the centennial of Heisenberg’s seminal paper that gave rise to quantum mechanics. Its impact remains as profound today as it was then: indeed, 2025 has been declared the International Year of Quantum Science and Technology, a testament to the ongoing influence of quantum theory on our understanding of the world. However, the emergence of quantum mechanics was neither sudden nor straightforward. The path to a coherent quantum framework was marked by conceptual struggles, bold hypotheses, and a growing awareness that physics needed to be fundamentally rethought. In our culturally informed approach to quantum mechanics, revisiting and understanding Heisenberg’s 1925 article is not merely an homage to history, but an opportunity to rediscover the conceptual and epistemological foundations of the theory. From a pedagogical perspective, we believe that a proper understanding of the paper requires a well-documented and precise knowledge of its historical context. Yet, it is equally essential to move beyond that context and address the questions it raises through the lens of physical concepts. This is the aim of the present work, which offers a new English translation of Heisenberg’s article, with special attention to the original terminology, accompanied by a commentary designed to clarify its meaning at a level accessible to university physics students. To our knowledge, despite the extensive literature on the subject—including numerous discussions and interpretations—no step-by-step fully annotated, pedagogical translation in English had yet been available to make the text as clear and transparent as possible.

Speaker: Giliberti, Marco (Università degli studi di Milano)

4 Looking for Quantum Logic: A Journey into von Neumann’s Works and his Legacy

John von Neumann’s path towards the construction of a logic for quantum mechanics is historically retraced, starting from the analysis of his seminal contributions on the mathematical foundations of quantum mechanics in the 1920s and 1930s, up to his joint work with G. Birkhoff on quantum logic in 1936, and his first paper on operator algebras with F. J. Murray in the same year. The main emerging feature is his growing dissatisfaction with the Hilbert space formalism because of the ensuing infinite and not a priori normalizable quantum probability, that led him to look for a new mathematical structure for quantum logic, later identified with the modular projection lattice of the so-called type II1 factor. The subsequent debate on von Neumann’s proposal is also retraced, including K. R. Popper’s criticism. In particular, we deal with the crucial issue of how to relate von Neumann’s more general structure to the conventional Hilbert space based quantum mechanics by critically analysing later contributions by a number of scholars, such as G. Mackey, G. Piron, J. M. Jauch, G. Ludwig and J. C. T. Pool.

Speaker: Di Mauro, Marco (INFN, Sezione di Roma)

5 "Alchemy", in Our Time

This contribution offers an unprecedented retrospective on the editorial story of “Alchimia del tempo nostro”, a book co-written by Ginestra Amaldi and Laura Fermi. It is a story holding a special historical-scientific interest and human value, which unfolds against the backdrop of the 1930s and the Second World War. The events are reconstructed through the documents emerged from the archive of the Hoepli publishing house, preserved at the University of Milan. Published in 1st edition in 1936, “Alchimia del tempo nostro” was the first Italian book dedicated to explaining the newly born nuclear physics to the general public. The volume was expanded by Ginestra and republished in 1943, while the war had interrupted the contacts between the two authors, separating them into two mutually hostile countries. With her husband Edoardo and their children, Ginestra was still living in Italy, in the “open city” of Rome, while Laura was in the USA, about to move with her husband Enrico and their children to the secret laboratories of Los Alamos. Read today, Laura and Ginestra’s book has not lost its formidable informative effectiveness, to which, however, a remarkable historical value is added, as an unaware testimony of a crucial era for science and humanity. The present historical research was stimulated on the occasion of the re-edition of “Alchimia del tempo nostro”, edited by Luisa Bonolis and Adele La Rana for the publisher Castelvecchi (November 2024).

Speaker: La Rana, Adele (Sapienza University of Rome & INFN, Rome 1 Division)

Musei, Archivi e Strumentazione scientifica di fisica e astronomia in Italia e nel mondo / Museums, Archives, and Scientific Instruments of Physics and Astronomy in Italy and Abroad

6 The Scientific Instrument Collection of the 'Giovanni Boato' Museum, Department of Physics, University of Genova

Speaker: Mantovani, Roberto (Università di Urbino)

13:20 Lunch

Storia della fisica e dell'astronomia / History of Physics and Astronomy

7 The Dependence of Time on the Electromagnetic Field in the Interpretation of Lorentz Transformations

In 1912, using the 'absolute vector calculus without coordinates' introduced a few years earlier together with Cesare Burali-Forti, Roberto Marcolongo provided an 'intrinsic' formulation—vectorial and coordinate-free—of the Lorentz-Poincaré transformations. The Lorentz-Poincaré-Marcolongo transformations are no longer solely interpretable as passive transformations between different inertial systems, but can also be understood as active transformations indicating dynamic changes in physical systems. These transformations also entail a different interpretation of time, which is no longer reduced to a mere coordinate dependent on the reference frame, but takes on a new relativistic dynamic meaning, linked to the magnetic field, as in the perspectives of Larmor, Poincaré, and Eddington.

Speaker: Giannetto, Enrico (Università di Bergamo)

8 The Forgotten History of Weak Isospin

The notion of weak isospin is usually associated with the birth of the standard model during the Sixties of the last century. However the idea of attributing to leptons a symmetry and quantum numbers analogous to isospin is much older, and the first instance of this idea can be found in a paper published in Nuovo Cimento in 1953 by Marcello Cini and Agusto Gamba. We discuss the most interesting aspects of that paper, highlighting some deep intuition present in their work.
We analyze the small number of articles citing Cini and Gamba, and explain the reasons why their contribution was criticized and quickly forgotten, essentially because the almost contemporary discovery of strangeness seemed to prove the inconsistency of their scheme, and only the much later introduction of the Cabibbo angle and the discovery of charm led to a modelization of weak isospin that is in many important aspects coherent with the original intuitions of 1953.

Speaker: Rossi, Paolo (Dipartimento di Fisica - Università di Pisa)

SISFA Prize

15:50 Coffe break

Visit to Galata Museo del mare

Wednesday 10 September

Dalla Vecchia Teoria dei Quanti alla Meccanica Quantistica / From the Old Quantum Theory to Quantum Mechanics

9 What Is Quantum Mechanics? Revisiting a Neglected Historical Path

This talk revisits a lesser-known trajectory in the development of quantum theory, beginning with Louis de Broglie’s 1924 doctoral thesis, in which he first proposed that waves guide particles. This idea introduced a radically different view of quantum phenomena. This thread was taken up and developed further by David Bohm in 1952, offering a clear and coherent theoretical framework that recovers all standard predictions while challenging the dominant interpretation. John Bell, in the following decades, clarified the conceptual stakes of this alternative route and showed that its core features introduce a perspective that continues to inform foundational debates. Retracing this path sheds light on what quantum mechanics could have been - and perhaps still is - beyond the standard narrative.

Speaker: Zanghì, Pierantonio (Dipartimento di Fisica, Università di Genova)

Dalla Vecchia Teoria dei Quanti alla Meccanica Quantistica / From the Old Quantum Theory to Quantum Mechanics

10 On First Looking into Bohr-Rosenfeld for Quantum Gravity

In an interview with Thomas Kuhn, Léon Rosenfeld commented that his oft-cited 1933 paper with Bohr on the measurability of the electromagnetic field was like Klopstock's Messiah: everyone seemed to agree that it was a masterpiece, but few were actually reading it. The situation, quite perplexingly, persists to this day, even if we include philosophers and historians of physics. This paper with Rosenfeld did not just represent a remarkable moment of crystallization for Bohr's ideas on what it actually means to perform a measurement in the context of the nascent quantum theory of fields. Even if further developments of such reflections were interrupted first by the Einstein-Podolski-Rosen challenge and then by the war, Bohr and Rosenfeld later went back to them, in the wake of the formulation of the new quantum electrodynamics. That is the moment in which, as I will describe in this talk, John Wheeler engaged with their work, first offering to the community an appreciated summary of their claims, and then trying to apply similar considerations, mutatis mutandis, to the case of the gravitational field. By highlighting analogies and, more importantly, disanalogies, Wheeler was unawarely following the steps of Matvei Bronstein, who, in the 1930s, at the instigation of Lev Landau, had performed a similar operation - without much of a following, though, also due to his tragic personal circumstances. By the early/mid-1950s, however, the times were ripe for such considerations to bear fruit and Wheeler, as I will document, made use of them in fostering the "renaissance of general relativity".

Speaker: Furlan, Stefano (Universiteit Utrecht)

11 Bohr and Heisenberg: Debate on the γ-Ray Microscope

On March 27th, 1927, Heisenberg published the paper in which he introduced the uncertainty relations through his well-known γ-ray microscope thought experiment. Since then, debates and commentaries on the origin of the uncertainty relations have continued for a century (see, for instance, Bacciagaluppi and Valentini 2009; Beller 1999; Brown and Redhead 1981; Hilgevoord and Uffink 1985, 2024; Jammer 1974; Uffink 1990). Going back to 1927 through a selection of letters — including an unpublished letter from Jordan to Rosenfeld — this talk aims to add a crucial piece to this century-old puzzle by shedding new light on the differences between Heisenberg and Bohr's conceptual basis for the uncertainty relations. According to the received view, Bohr derives the uncertainty relations from the wave-particle duality of light. By contrast, it is commonly stated that Heisenberg based them on the discontinuity in the interaction between the electron and the light quantum, i.e., the uncontrollable change resulting from the Compton effect (cf. Camilleri 2009). I will challenge the received view by arguing that: (i) Bohr’s derivation of the uncertainty relations fundamentally relies on the use of classical concepts, consistent with their central role in his broader interpretation of quantum mechanics. (ii) The supposed contrast rooted in the wave-particle duality of light may stem from Heisenberg’s 1927 misrepresentation (or misinterpretation) of Bohr's ideas on the γ-ray microscope. This misrepresentation may have influenced the reception of Bohr’s interpretation, particularly regarding his ideas on the conceptual justification for the uncertainty relations, and contributed to obscuring the deeper significance of Bohr's complementarity principle, fully comprehensible only in light of (i).

Speaker: Bolzonetti, Noemi (Utrecht University)

12 From Continuity to Complementarity: Tracing the Conceptual Foundations of Bohr’s Quantum Framework

Niels Bohr's concept of Complementarity consists of a profound rethinking of scientific objectivity. It stands as a fundamental and revolutionary contribution to modern physics that, however, remains regrettably underappreciated even a century after its first presentation. This neglect is mainly due to a persistent misunderstanding of both the concept itself and the intellectual path that led Bohr to formulate it.
This presentation offers a historical analysis based on archival material from the Niels Bohr Archive. It traces the genesis and development of Complementarity, demonstrating how Bohr constructed the only coherent conceptual framework for atomic physics of the time, underlining the central role of continuity in our classical understanding of nature.

Bohr's main point is that the assumption of continuity is what allows us to attribute meaningful properties to a physical system even when it does not directly interact with an observer. Continuity provides the foundation upon which the notion of an object can be built, one that is independent of our observations and possesses knowable properties. Central to Bohr's understanding of quantum phenomena is the recognition that the assumption of continuity is denied by the theory. The consequences of this constitute Complementarity.

If this element of Bohr's thinking remains underappreciated, contemporary approaches to quantum foundations risk being impoverished and current debates stalled. I will argue that in the era of the second quantum revolution, Complementarity —far from being a mere legacy of the past— can and should serve as the conceptual foundation for the very notion of information.

Speaker: Passaro, Marina (Utrecht university)

Storia della fisica e dell'astronomia / History of Physics and Astronomy

13 New Insights into Galileo's Contribution to the First Two Laws of Motion

This paper discusses Galileo's contribution to the understanding of the principles of dynamics. Much has been said about his contribution to the formulation of the principle of inertia and about his experimental confirmation of horizontal inertia. Yet Newton, in his Philosophiae Naturalis Principia Mathematica, stated that Galileo had knowledge of the first two laws of dynamics, thanks to which he had demonstrated the free-fall law of the square of time and had shown that the trajectory describing the motion of a projectile is parabolic. The work of some scholars who have cited Newton's statement will be discussed, providing a new perspective. In his Discorsi su Due Nuove Scienze, Galileo described some motions with a precision that only an understanding of the second law of motion would have made possible, even though he had not formulated the second law in its generality nor did he express any clear considerations about the concept of inertial mass: an enlightening example is Galileo's description of the motion of bodies falling in viscous fluids, which is accelerated in the first phase of the motion but for which the variations in velocity are increasingly smaller until the final velocity of fall is reached.

Speaker: Cioci, Vincenzo (Liceo scientifico "F. Sbordone" di Napoli - Sezione di Napoli dell'Associazione per l'Insegnamento della Fisica ETS)

14 Anachronisms in the History of Science: The Secret Face of Isaac Newton

Until a few decades ago, it was widely believed that the period of the so-called “Scientific Revolution” had introduced a radical caesura within the way of doing science compared to the previous tradition, definitively consecrating the rational scientific method and discarding all those magical, theological and alchemical approaches that had impregnated the scientific modus operandi up to that time. Indeed, even today we tend to consider the growth of the modern scientific movement as one of the main manifestations of that process of demystification of the worldview that characterized the XVII century. However, some research conducted in recent decades has shown that this belief is false or, at the very least, inappropriate: if one studies this period closely, one can indeed identify numerous historiographical errors arising from the application of anachronistic or a posteriori notions or categories, which are part of the achievements and theoretical-conceptual developments of a later tradition, which looks at the past by filtering it through lenses that are inadequate. Thus, the aim of my paper will be as follows: to demonstrate and restore the complexity of the figure of Isaac Newton and to identify the purpose and importance that alchemical and theological studies had within his research. As I will demonstrate, indeed, the contradiction between “Newton the Alchemist” and “Newton the Modern Scientist” disappears if we don’t apply to him anachronistic categories such as “science” and “scientist”, returning a holistic image of him that is closer to the true.

Speaker: Costa, Matteo (Università Sapienza di Roma)

15 Voices Through the Wires: The Reception and Experimentation of Bell's Telephone in Italy, 1877–1878

This talk examines the multifaceted scientific and technical reception of Bell's telephone in Italy during the crucial years of 1877–1878. After Bell patented his telephone in 1876, news of the 'speaking telegraph' reached Italy in February 1877 via the newly established journal L'Elettricista, edited by Lamberto Cappanera. Technical information subsequently circulated through specialised periodicals and the popular press, generating both enthusiasm and critical analysis and overcoming an initial scepticism arising from the device's American origins. From late 1877, pioneering experiments commenced, following distinct approaches: practical demonstrations in Milan by the engineer Marco Maroni and the Gerosa brothers; systematic investigations by Francesco Rossetti in Padua; and physico-mathematical analysis by Galileo Ferraris in Turin. Particular attention is given to the distinctive contributions of Alessandro Serpieri, who analysed not only the physical mechanics of transduction—proving sound transmission was possible even without the metallic diaphragm—but also fundamental questions of signal perception. Notably, Serpieri shifted the focus from purely technical matters to auditory perception's cognitive and epistemological problems. Through his ingenious phonetic experiments, which used unknown languages or words read backwards, Serpieri demonstrated that the telephone's apparent perfection depended less on the apparatus's technical fidelity and more on the listener's active cognitive processing. These diverse lines of inquiry—spanning technical experimentation, theoretical analysis, and cognitive investigation— integrated Bell's invention into Italy's scientific culture and contributed original insights that anticipated twentieth-century developments in psychoacoustics and communication theory.

Speaker: Mantovani, Roberto (University of Urbino Carlo Bo)

10:55 Coffee Break

Musei, Archivi e Strumentazione scientifica di fisica e astronomia in Italia e nel mondo / Museums, Archives, and Scientific Instruments of Physics and Astronomy in Italy and Abroad

16 Scientific and Technical Collections (PST) between Cataloguing and Storytelling: Synergies among MIC, University and Secondary Schools in the Ligurian Territory

As part of its cultural protection activities, the Superintendency of Archaeology, Fine Arts and Landscape for the metropolitan city of Genoa and the province of La Spezia intends to advance a project to inventory and study the collections of assets pertaining to the Scientific and Technological Heritage present in its territory.
This inventory aims to involve different institutional entities and different collections, with the goal of extending cataloguing actions of cultural assets through the ICCD path of the PST (Scientific and Technological Heritage) card, preparing its entry into the National General Catalogue System, through the new CLIO platform.
Several stakeholders will participate in the overall design of the project: the University of Genoa, with the Physics Museum, among other scientific museums under various departments, and several high schools equipped with Physics laboratories with historically significant collections. In partnership with the University of Genoa and the Archival and Library Superintendency of Liguria, the scientific collections of the University Museum System will be cataloged, so that the instruments, artifacts, archival materials, and library heritage - entities that are closely interrelated - do not become dispersed and do not lose the cognitive connection and intimate provenance that events such as closures or relocations may cause over time. The project also has a strong didactic-educational intent: the cataloging of the collections from the Physics Departments of secondary schools - for which a pilot project with the Costa High School in La Spezia is under consideration - will involve teachers, former students, and students under the supervision of Superintendency.

Speakers: Maltese, Stefano (MIC - Ministero della Cultura, SABAP città metropolitana di Genova e provincia della Spezia), Vinardi, Monica (MIC - Ministero della Cultura, SABAP città metropolitana di Genova e provincia della Spezia)

Musei, Archivi e Strumentazione scientifica di fisica e astronomia in Italia e nel mondo / Museums, Archives, and Scientific Instruments of Physics and Astronomy in Italy and Abroad

17 Rethinking an Eighteenth-Century Observatory: The New Exhibition at the Specola Museum in Bologna

The Specola Museum in Bologna is about to reopen with a fully redesigned exhibition, offering a renewed interpretation of the historical Astronomical Tower and its scientific and cultural legacy. Built between 1712 and 1726 on the initiative of Luigi Ferdinando Marsili, the Tower served as Bologna’s observatory until the opening of the Loiano Observatory in 1936. Today, its rooms house three centuries of scientific instruments and the stories of those who used and developed them.

The new exhibition unfolds across four thematic floors. One is dedicated to the life, studies, and astronomical expeditions of Guido Horn d’Arturo (1879–1967). Another explores his most innovative legacy: the multi-mirror telescope, a pioneering technology that continues to inspire today’s ground-based and space telescopes. A third section presents early modern instruments and the ways they shaped representations of the Earth and sky during the age of exploration. Finally, the upper floor traces the history and evolution of telescopes—from 17th-century refractors to 20th-century designs—displayed in the evocative setting of the Tower’s great hall.

Through historical artifacts, archival sources, immersive environments, and multimedia resources, the new layout presents the Specola as a living site of research, education, and public engagement—where the past, present, and future of astronomy converge.

Speaker: Rossi, Elisabetta (Università di Bologna)

18 The Astronomical and Copernican Museum: From the Original Collection to Later Developments

The idea of founding a permanent museum dedicated to the illustrious Polish astronomer dates back to 1873, the year of the fourth centenary of the birth of Nicolaus Copernicus (1473-1543), and was the result of an initiative proposed by former Minister of Public Education Domenico Berti and Filippo Serafini, rector of the University La Sapienza. Since then, a series of intricate events followed one after the other, leading to the inauguration of the Museum in its definitive location – Villa Mellini in Monte Mario – only on 28 October 1938.
Through a number of documents consulted in the historical archives of the Astronomical Observatory of Rome, the Accademia dei Lincei and the Department of Astronomy of the University Bologna, this contribution aims to reconstruct step by step the exciting history of the Astronomical and Copernican Museum between continuous relocations of sites, renovation and/or expansion works, and even the attempt to move the Museum to the city of Bologna.

Speaker: Verduci, Domenica (Museo Storico della Fisica e Centro Studi e Ricerche 'Enrico Fermi' e Università di Bologna 'Alma Mater Studiorum')

19 The Origins of the Physics Cabinet of the University of Naples

We explore the origins of the Physics Cabinet of the University of Naples. Using archival documents, instrument inventories and other primary sources, we reconstruct the complex history that led to the first collections of instruments in the Cabinet's premises at the beginning of the 19th century. Particular attention will be paid to the specific role of the professors, the instrument makers and the academic and political institutions. Finally, we will compare the contents of the old inventories with the current collection of the Physics Museum of the University to determine whether and which of these instruments have made it to us.

Speaker: Del Monte, Rosanna (Museo di Fisica Università di Napoli Federico II)

Storia della fisica e dell'astronomia / History of Physics and Astronomy

20 South-risk, South-safety: The Lightning Rod in Naples

In the eighteenth century, Naples played a pivotal role in the dissemination of Newtonian physics and the study of atmospheric electricity. A vibrant scientific community, including Della Torre, Bammacaro, Ardinghelli, and Poli, fostered experimentation and innovation. In a context of environmental vulnerability, conceptualized as South-risk, the city cultivated early forms of South-safety, anticipating protective urban strategies. This communication examines the installation of Naples’s first lightning rods as both a scientific and symbolic response to risk. British diplomat William Hamilton facilitated the transfer of knowledge and instruments, notably through the Italian translation of the pamphlet Chiare istruzioni per costruire ed innalzare sicuri conduttori (1794) by Felice Sabatelli. By making English theories on electrical conductors accessible to Italian audiences, the volume contributed to urban safety and a wider culture of risk awareness. Naples thus emerges as a laboratory of resilience, turning vulnerability into technological and cultural innovation.

Speaker: Gargano, Mauro (Istituto Nazionale di Astrofisica (INAF))

21 Meteorological Observations in Naples in the 19th Century: The Data Collection of the Real Gabinetto Fisico

A historical account of the meteorological observations carried out in Naples in the XIX century is here presented. After a brief overview of the institutions operating in the Neapolitan area and of the corresponding scientific activity, a preliminary report is given of a little-known observational activity pursued within the Real Gabinetto Fisico of the King of Two Sicilies, as testified by archival documents. As a result, a broad activity emerges, ranging from measurements of pressure, temperature, humidity, wind (direction and strength), rain and atmospheric electricity to observations of the status of clouds, and other phenomena related to the climate of Naples. A discussion of instruments as well as observation protocols is also highlighted, as inferred from original sources.

Speaker: Naddeo, Adele (INFN, Sezione di Napoli)

22 Two Centuries of Meteorological Observations in Foggia

The first observations were conducted in the second half of the 18th century by the vicar capitular of San Severo, Gaetano De Lucretiis (1745-1817), collaborator of Giuseppe Maria Giovene in the collection of meteorological data for Puglia. Fifty years later, the Economic Society of Foggia obtained royal authorization for the creation of the first meteorological observatory of the Kingdom. Unfortunately, for over thirty years it was unable to complete the project, despite the presence of experts and the purchase of instruments, due to obstacles placed by local administrations. However, archive documents allow us to reconstruct the market of meteorological instruments in the 19th century in the Kingdom of Naples: a little studied topic with regard to the situation of the peripheral areas of southern Italy. The first meteorological observatory was opened in 1876, two years after the one in Lecce and before the one in Bari, which dates back to 1884, and was directed by Vincenzo Nigri. The creation of the national meteorological network smoothed out bureaucratic difficulties and the Foggia administration began to perceive the advantages of maintaining a local center for the collection of meteorological data. The Nigri observatory was active until 2007. Since 2024 it has become a museum.

Speaker: De Frenza, Lucia (SISFA)

13:20 Lunch

Dialogo tra storia, didattica e divulgazione in fisica e astronomia / Dialogue Between History, Teaching and Dissemination in Physics and Astronomy

23 The History of Physics Contribution to Physics Education: The Experience of Module T6 of the Master IDIFO2426

A group of Italian researchers (RD&RS) reflected for some years on the contribution of the history of physics in teaching/learning physics in secondary school. This group RD&RS cooperate to design the T6 Module of the Master IDIFO2426 aimed at professional development of secondary school physics teachers at national level. A preliminary questionnaire explored the role attributed and the experience in introducing contributions from the history of physics in teaching by the teachers enrolled in the Module T6. RD&RS designed 3 credits of the T6 Module in the Master IDIFO2426 planning 7 interventions by each member of RD&RS group in 2.5-hour sessions, in which two members illustrated examples that constituted significant ways of contributing history to physics education. The interest of the participants was good: the T6 Module was the most chosen among the ten that each student had to select from the 33 training modules offered by the IDIFO 2426 Master. In each session all the RD&RS colleagues participated in the discussion after each presentation. At the end of the T6 Module, we asked each participant to illustrate, in light of the offered contributions and discussions, the perspectives in terms of the potential of history in physics education, how these perspectives had changed with the contribution offered, as well as the production of a short design in which two of the contributions offered for an physics education activity were used. The analysis of the experience conducted offers us the opportunity to identify needs and methods for physics teachers professional development regarding the history of physics.

Speakers: Michelini, Marisa, Balzano, Emilio (Università Suor Orsola Benincasa di Napoli), Esposito, Salvatore (Dipartimento di Fisica "Ettore Pancini", Università di Napoli Federico II & INFN Sezione di Napoli), Giliberti, Marco (Università degli studi di Milano), La Rana, Adele (Sapienza University of Rome), Leone, Matteo (University of Turin), Straulino, Samuele (Università di Firenze)

Dialogo tra storia, didattica e divulgazione in fisica e astronomia / Dialogue Between History, Teaching and Dissemination in Physics and Astronomy

24 From Galileo to Hawking: How Analogies Have Influenced Astronomical Thought and Its Scientific Communication

This presentation explores the role of analogical reasoning in astronomy and cosmology, emphasizing how analogies have shaped scientific discovery, theory development, and communication. It examines key historical examples such as Galileo’s analogy between the Moon and the Earth, Newton’s gravitational analogy, and visual models like Eddington’s expanding balloon. Special attention is given to Gamow’s stellar analogy for explaining primordial helium, as well as to Penrose and Hawking’s use of analogies between black hole singularities and the origin of the universe. These cases demonstrate how analogies not only function as explanatory tools but also serve as catalysts for conceptual breakthroughs.
In addition, this presentation highlights the dialogue between history, science education, and public engagement. It addresses the impact of visual analogies, like Eddington’s balloon analogy, in both advancing scientific understanding and engaging non-expert audiences. These visual models have played an important role in making complex cosmological concepts more accessible and effective in teaching.

Speaker: Macchia, Giovanni (University of Urbino)

25 The Critical Inertia of Teaching the Principle of Inertia

In the history of the study of physics, the principle of inertia and the concept of force have been the toughest stumbling blocks for students. But they have also been for teachers, if it is true that, to date, more cognitive research has been carried out in this area than in any other. More generally, all three laws of dynamics have proved difficult to understand and explain, if authors such as Halliday and Resnick, sixty years ago, in their famous text for university students went so far as to tell their readers: «even if you don’t quite understand what the laws say, just get on with your problem solving in the approved fashion and everything will come out all right» They therefore admitted that in physics teaching the difference between saying and doing was viable. This had not been the case before them: we recall the criticisms and attempts to reformulate the principle of inertia by Mach, Hertz, the reflections of Poincaré, Carnot, Leibnitz, etc., who were primarily concerned with the logical and experimental consistency of the principle, as well as the consistency between the definitions of the concepts and the laws of motion, which could not be found in Newton.
That being said, to take up these long-sidelined arguments, let us ask ourselves today, both from a historical-critical and a didactic point of view: from which statement of the principle of inertia is it most appropriate to introduce the discourse? Is there a completely experimental statement? A suggestion is added

Speaker: Cerreta, Pietro (Associazione ScienzaViva, Calitri)

26 Precipitation Measurement by Analog Rain Gauges: Historical Aspects and Application to Interdisciplinary Workshops for Lower Secondary School

The amount of rainfall over a certain territory within a specific time interval has always been highly relevant for understanding hydrogeological and atmospheric phenomena. Its importance is steadily growing due to the need to monitor and study climate change. While the analog rain gauge for measuring cumulative rainfall may seem like a simple graduated container, the choice of its shape and its calibration involves some significant aspects. This is true from both a physical perspective, regarding the very concept of measurement and its accuracy, and a mathematical perspective, concerning the mathematical modeling of the instrument (e.g., substantial differences between constant-section and variable-section rain gauges). In this talk, we will propose an activity that links the analysis of instruments and historical data sets, in particular those of the Historical Weather Observatory of the University of Genoa, active since 1833, with a workshop activity proposed during A.Y. 2024/25 to secondary school teachers in a multidisciplinary training course. The focus of the activity is the analysis and construction of rain gauges as a cue to reflect on concepts such as rainfall flow, volume, and the assumptions underlying rain detection with an analog rain gauge. Furthermore, the analysis of historical and modern data on cumulative precipitation also opens up discussions on intense meteorological phenomena, including from a perspective of civic education.

Speaker: Telesio, Francesca (Istituto Comprensivo Teglia, Università degli Studi di Genova)

Musei, Archivi e Strumentazione scientifica di fisica e astronomia in Italia e nel mondo / Museums, Archives, and Scientific Instruments of Physics and Astronomy in Italy and Abroad

27 Montefeltro in the 17th Century: Water Management and Knowledge of the Environment in Archive Documents

The Fondo Ducato di Urbino, kept at the Archivio di Stato in Florence, constitutes an extraordinarily valuable, but still only partially studied, documentary resource for understanding the administrative and technical history of the Duchy between the 14th and 18th centuries. The talk focuses on the analysis of the technical reports and iconographic representations that reached Florence through the inheritance of Duchess Vittoria della Rovere, consort of Ferdinando II de' Medici. In particular, the examination makes it possible to reconstruct the debate between mathematicians and engineers regarding managing water and land properties that belonged to Vittoria della Rovere in the territories of Urbino and Pesaro. These documents offer valuable testimony on the forms of transmission of practical and engineering knowledge in the 17th century. Particular attention is paid to the figure of the mathematician Vincenzo Viviani, trusted advisor to the duchess and responsible for the technical management of the mills. In particular, in the first part of the talk, I will briefly present how the Fund was formed and its contents. Subsequently, I will contextualise the debate on water management that emerges from studying the documents inventoried in the so-called Seconda and Terza Classe. Finally, I will analyse the reports and letters of Vincenzo Viviani, also relating them to what is preserved in the Biblioteca Nazionale Centrale in Florence. This study constitutes the first part of an extensive reconnaissance work and detailed analysis of the documents preserved in the Seconda and Terza Classe of the Fondo Ducato di Urbino at the Archivio di Stato in Florence. These documents make it possible both to understand the nature of the debate between mathematicians and technicians on the management of the Montefeltro territories, and to foster the development of cultural knowledge of the territory.

Speaker: Pietrini, Davide (University of Urbino)

28 A Case of (Hidden) Identity: Ralph Greatorex’s Sundial as a Dividing Engine

This paper will present the results of the research that had been carried out over an historical scientific instrument, a dividing engine part of the collection of the Gabinetto di Fisica of the Seminario Vescovile in the city of Cremona that was under conservation treatment by myself. During this study a fragment of a sundial was found, used as part of the engine. Further analysis confirmed that the sundial had been made by the scientific instrument maker Ralph Greatorex (1625-1675).
Following the methodology proposed by George L’E. Turner the research was pushed in all the directions, finding some new archival sources for the life of Greatorex, reconstructing the social aspect of the craftsmen in London during the British Renaissance, and the connections that this incredible instrument maker had. The social aspects were crossed with the scientific ones, considering the mathematical knowledge that the maker must have had.
In this contest mathematical practitioners in the renaissance’s London played a fundamental role in developing new instruments and using these tools as a meaning to teach and rise awareness of the importance that mathematics, physics, chemistry and the natural philosophy in general held in the modern society that they were shaping. Some of the persons we can remember were William Oughtred, Samuel Hartlib, Robert Boyle, Robert Hooke, Christopher Wren and Samuel Pepys. People with different interests, that shared their knowledge with Ralph Greatorex, all of them dealing with him as a scientific instrument maker, and sometimes also as a friend.

Speaker: Rocca, Luca (Università di Pisa)

29 Symbol, Political Tool, Failed Innovation: The Strange Case of the Torlonia Telescope at the Osservatorio del Campidoglio

The Torlonia telescope has recently been the subject of studies that have highlighted its value for the development of science in the Papal States, in 19th century. This renewed interest was made possible through a process of restoration and valorization.
Rome had a long tradition of astronomical studies and the telescope became a symbol of a period when scientific thought was promoted both by Papal States and by roman patrons.
In 1814, Pio VII established a chair of Sacred Physics and Astronomy at Sapienza University, assigning it to Feliciano Scarpellini who reconstituted the Accademia dei Lincei.
In 1824, with the bull of Pope Leone XII Quod divina Sapientia, universities were once again placed under papal authority and two years later, the Pope decided to equip La Sapienza with the observatory on the Campidoglio and Scarpellini was appointed director.
In that context, in 1835 the telescope was designed as a demonstration of how experimental and innovative science was managed in Rome.
Alberto Gatti, an engineer that focused his research on crafting a primary mirror from polished hard stone, submitted a memorandum of his idea to the Papal Secretariat. Scarpellini considered it innovative and he presented it to Prince Alessandro Torlonia, who commissioned to Angelo Luswergh the construction of the telescope.
It was installed on the Campidoglio, where it was tested through terrestrial observations and it remained an experimental device and a tool for popularizing astronomy rather than a fully functional observational instrument, as evidenced by Ignazio Calandrelli.

Speaker: Macaluso, Tiziana (Istituto Nazionale di Astrofisica (INAF))

16:35 Coffee Break

Sisfa General Assembly

Social Dinner

Thursday 11 September

Musei, Archivi e Strumentazione scientifica di fisica e astronomia in Italia e nel mondo / Museums, Archives, and Scientific Instruments of Physics and Astronomy in Italy and Abroad

30 The Wild-Hofmann Polaristrobometer: A Nineteenth-Century Breakthrough in Optical Sugar Analysis

At the end of 1863, Heinrich Wild, physics professor at the University of Bern, conceived the polaristrobometer, a groundbreaking optical instrument designed to measure the rotation of polarized light caused by crystalline substances and organic compounds. The polaristrobometer was developed in two versions: a compact handheld model and a larger tripod-mounted device. This presentation focuses on the first handheld specimens, constructed by the renowned Parisian instrument maker Jean Georges Hofmann. The device was sold in several copies during that period, although, as far as we know, only a very limited number of specimens seem to have survived in museums and private collections. Equipped with Nicol prisms, Savart plates, and a precise rotating drum mechanism, the device achieved measurement accuracy ten times greater than previous instruments. Its portability and ease of use allowed measurements under natural lighting without requiring dark rooms, overcoming limitations of earlier polarimeters. The polaristrobometer had diverse applications, ranging from industrial sugar analysis in refining and food production to medical diagnostics, especially diabetes monitoring. Wild’s invention thus marked a significant advancement in nineteenth-century analytical instrumentation, combining optical physics with practical chemical analysis. This presentation seeks to explore the scientific ingenuity behind the handheld polaristrobometer made by Hofmann, describing its design and features, and discussing its important and successful role in sugar measurement and diagnostic technologies of its time, despite being largely forgotten today.

Speaker: Lovisetti, Luisa (Università degli Studi di Milano)

31 Belinograph, the Ancestor of the Facsimile: Its Role in the Transmission of Still Images

This study explores the forgotten history of still and documentary image transmission, focusing on the evolution of the facsimile. The research started with the discovery of equipment from the early decades of the 20th century, which revealed the importance of this pioneering technology, now part of the collections of the MUMEC Museo dei Mezzi di Comunicazione in Arezzo.
The roots of this innovation go back to Giovanni Caselli's Pantelgraph, patented between 1855 and 1860, capable of sending and receiving images via an electro-chemical telegraphic system. The decisive step came in 1904 with the invention of the Belinograph by French engineer Edouard Belin. This device used a photocell to convert images into electrical signals, transmitting them through existing telegraph and telephone networks. Belin also created a receiver that decoded these signals, reconstructing the image on chemically treated photographic paper.
In 1914, Belin extended his invention to radio telegraphic (wireless) transmissions, anticipating the era of wireless communication. The Belinographic system, also known as 'telephotography', was fundamental to journalism, enabling the rapid dissemination of photographs around the world. This technology laid the foundations for the modern fax machine, photocopiers and scanners, revolutionising the transmission of documents and visual information well before the digital age. The research explores the impact of this system on society and analyses its use and historical persistence in Italy between the 1920s and 1930s, the period of maximum success for Belin's technology.

Speaker: Casi, Fausto (SISFA)

32 The Fast Analogue Computer of the Milan Relativistic Cyclotron

In 1965 the variable-frequency relativistic cyclotron of the Institute of Physical Sciences of the University of Milan went into operation. The cyclotron was used in various fields of nuclear physics research and its applications in the medical and technological fields, accelerating particles, mainly protons, up to an energy of 45 MeV. The analogue-digital computer is the only part of the machine that has been conserved in its entirety, and is made up of various components housed in two main racks. The computer was used to optimize the trajectory of the charged particles exiting the accelerator. The extant archive documentation has allowed us to analyze its operation, in particular with regard to the sequence of operations performed to obtain the best configuration of the beam transport system, acting on the length of the path travelled by the exiting particles, the position of the magnetic deflector elements along this path, and the gradient of the magnetic field inside the deflectors. The computer has undergone a conservative cleaning intervention and is currently on exhibition in the main atrium of the Physics Department "Aldo Pontremoli" as an addition to the collection of historical educational instruments.

Speaker: Gariboldi, Leonardo (Università degli Studi di Milano, Dipartimento di Fisica "Aldo Pontremoli")

33 Technological Innovation for the Valorization of Astronomical Heritage: The New Multimedia Installation of the "La Specola" Museum in Padua

"Culture is humanity's only asset that, when divided among all, instead of diminishing becomes greater." When Gadamer spoke these words, the reality of the web had not yet established itself. Today, alongside traditional means of communication, we find a series of allies that allow for the widespread dissemination of culture. This is the case of the new visiting project at the museum La Specola of Padua, which aims to make the enjoyment of its heritage more accessible and engaging.
Of the over 8,000 visitors who annually visit the museum, a considerable fraction, about 20%, is of foreign origin, which highlights a significant limitation in traditional monolingual visits. Starting from this premise, a project has been developed that, combining tradition and innovation, allows all visitors to explore the Paduan Observatory through a multilingual system designed for both groups and individual visitors. Thanks to a web app, the guided tour will be available not only in Italian, but also in English, French, German, Spanish, Slovenian, and Chinese. This will guarantee a more inclusive cultural experience both for an international audience and for users with mobility difficulties. In fact, the same contents will also be integrated within a virtual tour, making the Specola increasingly accessible.
The web app will also be integrated with a series of immersive elements in virtual and holographic reality that will allow for deeper exploration of some contents related to the evolution of astronomical knowledge. The project proposes a model that combines inclusivity and heritage valorization, highlighting the potential of technologies in disseminating the history of science.

Speaker: Di Giacomo, Federico (Istituto Nazionale di Astrofisica (INAF))

Storia della fisica e dell'astronomia / History of Physics and Astronomy

34 The First Fresnel Memoir

In the historical development of the research on diffraction, it is commonly referred to that two theories had been proposed, one by Thomas Young and the other by Augustin Fresnel. It appears less pointed that the first 1816 Fresnel’s Mémoire describes the diffraction as an edge effect, like in Young’s Bakerian lecture, but also agrees with the pioneering works of XVIII Century French authors. A first consideration about the diffraction phenomenon is to consider it as an “edge effect” by an attractive or repulsive force at/near the edge. The Fresnel contribution is here revisited.

Speaker: Ganci, Salvatore (none)

35 Agostino Codazzi: Scientific-Military Architect in the Construction of Venezuela and Colombia

We examine the life and military-scientific contributions of Agustín Codazzi (1793-1859), highlighting his pivotal role as a pioneer of applied physics and technical education in Latin America. Drawing on his solid European scientific training at the prestigious Scuola Teorético-Pratica d'Artiglieria in Pavia, Codazzi became a key figure in the institutionalization of science education, particularly analytical mechanics, geodesy, and military engineering, along with the challenging development of a modern geography of the Amazon region and military strategy, always grounded in mathematics, in both Venezuela and New Granada (present-day Colombia). His work transcends traditional cartography to establish the foundations of modern science education, introducing rigorous physical principles into the training of engineers and military officers. His contributions provided the essential foundations for the development of applied physics, territorial defense, and state administration in these emerging republics.

Speaker: Verrilli Hernandez, David (Universidad Central de Venezuela)

36 Francesco Orioli: A Multifaceted Physicist in the Early Italian Renaissance

Among the physicists of the University of Perugia in the 19th century, the figure of Francesco Orioli emerges as one of the most famous who taught in Perugia. He was born in Vallerano (Viterbo) in 1783 and died in Rome in 1856. He was appointed professor of Physics in 1813 at the University of Perugia and then moved to the University of Bologna. He remained in Bologna until the riots of 1831, due to his participation he was forced to flee first to France and then to Corfu until his return to Rome with the amnesty of 1846. He was a multifaceted man: patriot, humanist, archaeologist, doctor, teacher and physicist. He is well known for his role as an active patriot from the First Italian Risorgimento. The documentation on his biography as a politician is quite extensive, while there are no systematic studies on his activity as a scientist. In this research we will try to fill this gap. His studies allow us to make an overview of the state of the art of various scientific issues, some quite controversial, as they presented themselves in the first half of the 19th century. As a physicist he had many interests, also interested in astronomy, he was particularly active in the field of meteorology and electrology, dealing with the controversial problem of the so called Paragrandini that animated the academic debate of the first half of the nineteenth century in which Volta also took part.

Speaker: Sanchini, Giampaolo (MIM - Università di Perugia - Ordine dei Chimici e dei Fisici di Roma)

37 Eugenio Beltrami between Mathematics and Music

Eugenio Beltrami (1835-1900) was a mathematician of considerable importance in Europe during the late 19th century. Furthermore, he cultivated an interest in music, encompassing both theoretical and practical domains. Evidence for this can be found in extant notes and a paper entitled La teoria della scala diatonica that were published in the Rendiconti dell'Istituto Lombardo in 1882. The present paper undertakes an analysis of Beltrami's writing, with particular attention to its placement within the context of his era.
Beltrami's paper was written at a time when the foundations of both music and mathematics were being debated. Music, because if the purely mechanistic (physical and physiological) explanation of the auditory experience had reached its maturity with the contribution of Helmholtz, it had meanwhile shown its limits in explaining fundamental phenomena such as consonance, which required a psychological explanation. Mathematics because of the birth of a new branch of it, born of the crisis of Euclidean geometry, known as modern mathematical physics, which took as its principles statements external to mathematics, while maintaining its axiomatic approach.
Beltrami applied the new mathematical physics to music, assuming few acoustic properties and exploiting the great deductive power of mathematics. His work can be seen as a forerunner of modern mathematical music theory (a new branch of mathematical physics). Faced with criticism of the mechanistic view of acoustics, he felt free to adopt an aesthetic criterion, seeking beauty in the proportions of intervals, so that his approach was somewhat closer to the music theory of the ancient Greeks than to that of his contemporaries, relying more on mathematics than on acoustics.

Speaker: Capecchi, Danilo (SISFA)

10:40 Coffe Break

Dialogo tra storia, didattica e divulgazione in fisica e astronomia / Dialogue Between History, Teaching and Dissemination in Physics and Astronomy

38 Reenactment and the History of Natural Philosophy: Scientific Educational Games from the 17th to the 19th Century

Educational games have a long and rich history. Among them are numerous examples of card and board games that have been used over time to teach and popularize scientific knowledge.
This practice was particularly widespread among the middle and upper classes of European society between the late 18th and early 19th centuries. However, even earlier—in the 17th century—such games had already taken root, albeit in different forms and aimed at different audiences.
Today, these games attract the attention of scholars across various disciplines, including the history of games, the history of education, and the history of science. Theoretical insights from visual and material culture, as well as from the history of print—especially
studies on ephemera—also play a crucial role in understanding their significance.
This presentation aims to offer a (necessarily partial) reconstruction of the history of these educational games: how they circulated in the marketplace and in different social contexts, how they were used, and who their intended audiences were. The focus will be on games with themes related to astronomy and physics.
In addition, I would like to explore the potential of these historical games as educational tools in the present day. Imagine, for instance, reprinting a game like the Wallis Board Game of Natural Philosophy, originally published in London in 1805, and having a classroom of students play it, strictly following the original instructions. This kind of reenactment would allow students to engage directly with early 19th-century physics—or at least, with the kind of physics that was being taught to their peers at the time.
Following the gameplay session, students could participate in a historical and theoretical discussion of the scientific concepts that emerged, from the perspective of the history of physics. This could then lead to further reflection on teaching methods—comparing those of the past with contemporary educational approaches.

Speaker: Ampollini, Ilaria (Università degli Studi di Ferrara)

Dialogo tra storia, didattica e divulgazione in fisica e astronomia / Dialogue Between History, Teaching and Dissemination in Physics and Astronomy

39 From Experiments to Concepts, from Theories to Experiments: Toward a Circular and Historical-Epistemological Didactics of Contemporary Physics

In Italian upper secondary schools, especially in techno-scientific courses, contemporary physics topics such as special relativity and quantum mechanics are often treated superficially as late-stage additions rather than integral components of the curriculum. This is mainly due to structural limitations but also to resistance to methodological innovation. Yet in today's world, permeated by relativistic and quantum technologies, awareness of their conceptual and historical foundation has turned into a key competence.
This contribution proposes an alternative didactic model with a circular approach. Starting from hands-on experiments (adapted to school settings and focused on a few indispensable notions) students can actively engage in inquiry-based learning. From these experimental foundations, the physics curriculum can then expand toward rigorous but accessible theoretical conceptualizations, framed within their historical-epistemological contexts, in order to reconstruct the importance of such experiments.
Specific examples (black-body radiation, the photoelectric effect, the double-slit experiment, and the Michelson–Morley interferometer) will be provided, alongside a didactic version of the Aspect–Clauser–Zeilinger experiment on Bell’s inequality violation and quantum entanglement, recently adopted by the Liceo M. L. King in Genoa.
One aim is to demonstrate the feasibility of teaching contemporary physics at Italian techno-scientific high schools, in connection with student training in laboratory practice and in some advanced but still accessible mathematics. The other is to foster students’ effective learning and critical understanding of 20th-century physics, with direct links to nowadays cutting-edge issues like quantum computing and cryptography.

Speaker: Salvia, Stefano (University of Pisa)

40 The Unreasonable Effectiveness of Analogy in the Natural Sciences and Their Public Dissemination: The Case of Gravitational Waves

The title of this paper, a clear paraphrase of Eugene Wigner’s renowned essay on the role of mathematics in the natural sciences, is intended to highlight the epistemological significance of analogical reasoning—a process that the history of science has shown to be pivotal across numerous domains and in a wide range of discoveries. The resemblance between concepts, the referencing and evocation of pre-existing ideas through aesthetically resonant metaphors, allows these ideas to be set in motion, to move beyond axioms and empirical evidence, and to venture—boldly—into directions that would otherwise remain inaccessible. The use of analogy is often explicitly acknowledged in the works of great scientists; a notable example is Albert Einstein, who makes deliberate use of it—for instance, when introducing his concept of gravitational waves by stating that the relevant calculation is carried out “in a manner analogous to that of retarded potentials in electrodynamics.” The aim of this contribution is therefore to initiate an analysis of the role of analogical reasoning in the particularly evocative case of the term “wave”, and to illustrate how I employ this strategy within Chirp!, a page which I intend to develop as a platform for the public dissemination of the GraWita project and with a specific focus on the forthcoming research to be conducted using the Einstein Telescope.

Speaker: Adamo, Angelo (Istituto Nazionale di Astrofisica (INAF))

41 The Militancy of the Dedalo Publishing House in Bari: il Manifesto, Sapere and More

The Dedalo publishing house in Bari has shown great interest in popularisation of science and political commitment since it began publishing in 1965. The acceptance of il Manifesto, rejected by Einaudi and Feltrinelli, as well as the purchase in 1967 of the seminal magazine "Sapere", the first science popularisation magazine in Italy, are just two examples of the many publications that have made Dedalo present in several areas of society. This contribution intends to make known the activism and continuity, also in the following years, of this dynamic publishing house, also in relation to the Bari area.

Speaker: Romano, Luigi (Università degli Studi di Bari)

Storia della fisica e dell'astronomia / History of Physics and Astronomy

42 Maria Kahanovicz: The Brief Scientific Adventure of the First Female Professor at the University of Bari

Maria Kahanovicz (1890-1936), of Polish origin, who graduated with degrees in Mathematics and Physics from the University of Naples, represents an interesting example of a female physicist from the early 20th century. A libera docente (lecturer) in Experimental Physics, she was invited to teach Applied Physics for Medicine and, later, also Mineralogy at the newly established University of Bari in the academic year 1924-25. She was the only woman in the Faculty of Medicine and Surgery and the first femal teacher of the University of Bari. She was responsible for setting up the Physics Laboratory and, among other didactic instruments, oversaw the activation of a “Marconifono” receiver. Her "learnedy" lessons covered the most current topics, with particular attention to optical instruments used in medicine. During her short life, she was interested in meteorology, the study of the Earth's atmosphere, and the physics of metals, achieving interesting results for which she received the Sella prize from the Accademia Nazionale dei Lincei. After teaching at other universities, she returned to Naples seriously ill and died at only forty years of age.

Speaker: Campanile, Benedetta (Università degli Studi di Bari Aldo Moro)

43 The Polymer Model in Early 20th Century Physics

It is a well-established result in the history of science that the various disciplines are not isolated entities, but instead exchange knowledge in the form of mathematical structures, paradigmatic examples, analogies, and models. Consider, for example, the Lotka–Volterra model, which describes two competing animal species and represents one of the first uses of a mathematical structure to describe a biological phenomenon. Or take note of how the mathematical formalism developed by Dirac for Quantum Mechanics is now used in Information Retrieval to model the context of a sentence.
Given the importance of knowledge transfer between different disciplines — or even between different branches of the same discipline — we will examine the polymer model in early 20th-century physics, as it is within this model that the concept of entropic force emerged, a concept that has greatly influenced the idea of gravity as an "emergent" force. We will focus in particular on the evolution of the model’s ontological structure, as it is this very structure that first made possible the later application of statistical thermodynamics to the physical properties of rubber.
We will also show how the theoretical study of the model will occurr when a large body of experimental data and technological research will require a deeper theoretical framework. The polymer model, therefore, is the outcome of a long process spanning at least seventy years, involving physics, chemistry, and technology, and culminating in the early 1950s with the definition of what a polymer is and what its physical characteristics are.

Speaker: Gasco, Enrico (Zirak)

44 Joint Commitment Model as a Tool for Understanding Scientific Collaboration: The Case of Nuclear Fusion Research

The cooperative endeavors that permeate modern science, especially following its remarkable expansion in the twentieth century, have become a focal point of discussion in the history and philosophy of science. In this paper, I apply the joint commitment model—a prominent framework in the social epistemology of groups and the organization of their cognitive labor—to nuclear fusion research.
Unlike personal commitments, which individuals can rescind at will, joint commitments, formed by plural subjects, are not easily dissolved and typically require collective agreement to be revoked. Margaret Gilbert has extended this framework to scientific communities, arguing that here joint commitments primarily concern the shared beliefs of the plural subjects involved, thus reinforcing epistemic cohesion and enabling research programs to advance. This model explains both the stability of scientific consensus and the role of dissenters in driving change. Scientists who deviate from group beliefs — “free riders” — navigate strategic risks, balancing potential gains, career implications, and the influence of competing groups against the costs of nonconformity. In this way, the model captures the tension between conformity and the disruptive potential of individual actors.
In this talk, I argue that, contrary to Gilbert’s account, the joint commitment model is insufficient as a general explanation of scientific change. However, I suggest that it remains useful for analyzing smaller scientific communities, such as research collaborations, if its focus is reframed. Specifically, I challenge the emphasis on shared beliefs in Gilbert’s model and propose an operationalization using a distant reading approach consisting of a keyword search strategy across a database that collects papers in nuclear fusion research from 1979 to 2001. I then outline a method for making joint commitments within research groups measurable, providing a concrete framework for understanding key dynamics of scientific collaboration.

Speaker: Guzzardi, Luca (Università degli Studi di Milano)

13:05 Lunch

Gian Domenico Cassini: 400 anni dalla nascita / Gian Domenico Cassini: 400 Years After his Birth

45 Opening Cassini's Session

46 Giovanni Domenico Cassini and Astronomy in his Bolognese Years: 1649-1669

The most important astronomical themes in the years spent by Cassini in Bologna concerned the problem of the “World Systems” and the physics that justified them.
His works were an important part of this history, making him one of the greatest astronomers of the seventeenth century.
A few decades had passed since the condemnation of Galileo, of his anti-Peripatetic physics and of the new heliocentric cosmos. Especially in environments such as the main university of the Papal States, it was not easy to delve into those themes with a critical and unconventional spirit.
Cassini entered into those discussions with attention to drawing conclusions only from “facts” – observations and measurements – rather than from unjustified assumptions, philosophical elaborations or theological prejudices.
Although with a certain “dissimulation”, typical of the time, the projects of his observations and measurements were aimed at verifying the supremacy of the World System of the “novatores” and of the new physics, with respect to geostatic systems and Scholastic physics.
The construction of the great sundial, in San Petronio was one of the first and most important steps in this direction – with the first observational verification of Kepler’s second law – together with the demonstration that comets were celestial bodies orbiting the Sun beyond the Moon, and with the rotation measures of Sun and planets. The tables of Jupiter’s satellites in 1668 Ephemerides Bononienses Mediceorum Syderum were then so important in tackling an ancient and difficult problem, the measurement of longitude, that Louis XIV called him to Paris to deal with the construction and management of the Observatoire Royal, thus making him abandon the city of Bologna and his University forever.

Speaker: Bònoli, Fabrizio (Università di Bologna)

47 Cassini at the Observatoire Royal: Adapting the Building to Astronomers' Practices

In 1669, after many negotiations to keep his position at the Studium in Bologna, Giovanni Domenico Cassini left for Paris. The Italian astronomer and professor was called to France by Jean-Baptiste Colbert to evaluate a very important building under construction: the Observatoire royal, a royal palace, the highest expression of scientific observation and the only building for science built by Louis XIV. This was to serve symbolically and materially for the programs of the newly founded Académie royale des sciences.
At that time, the building had been completed as far as the first floor. Cassini gave various recommendations to adapt it to his idea of astronomical practice.
But what was a building for observation like at the time? How could celestial observation be reconciled with the practice of other sciences? What did an astronomer do at the time, and above all, what sources explain this to us today?
In my presentation, we will look at a series of key points on Giovanni Domenico Cassini's idea of astronomical practice, in particular how he thought a building for observing the sky should be designed. It will be an opportunity to take stock of the historiography on Cassini I and the Observatoire royal.

Speaker: Deias, Dalia (Université de Bordeaux, Laboratoire SPH, EHESS-Ecole des hautes études en sciences sociales, Centre Alexandre Koyré)

16:20 Coffe Break

Dialogo tra storia, didattica e divulgazione in fisica e astronomia / Dialogue Between History, Teaching and Dissemination in Physics and Astronomy

48 Astronomy as Cultural Heritage: Educational Engagement Across Generations at the Regional Astronomical Observatory of the Antola Park

Astronomy has always had a big charm on people of all ages and it is therefore a discipline well suited to draw them closer to science. In this talk, we'll present an initiative in which university students organize and carry on in first person dissemination and didactic events for kindergarden kids to high school students to third-age people by joining the StarAntola association of volunteers and conducting astronomical observations at the Regional Astronomical Observatory of the Antola Park, near Genova. Examples of some didactic experiences that were recently carried on will be presented.

Speaker: Monticelli, Moreno (Istituto Nazionale di Astrofisica (INAF))

49 Introducing NOCTIS: A Coordinated Network of Small Telescopes

The project NOCTIS aims at building and coordinating a network of already existing small telescopes covering the whole Italian territory. These regional and/or private observatories may be used to perform simultaneous observations or to overcome the drawback of local bad weather allowing delocalised observations. NOCTIS will provide both scientific photometric data (either stand-alone or complementary to other observational programs) and educational outreach programs. At the moment, the network consists of six observatories in different regions (Sicily, Calabria, Campania, Tuscany, and Liguria), but it is open to any additional interested parties. Examples of didactic and outreach events carried on with the telescopes will presented in this contribution, including remote usage by students in other continents.

Speaker: Sangaletti, Leonardo (Università di Genova)

Gian Domenico Cassini: 400 anni dalla nascita / Gian Domenico Cassini: 400 Years After his Birth

50 In Search of Longitude at Sea: The Tables of Jupiter's Satellites from Galileo to Vincenzo Renieri

In the early 1600s, the age-old problem of knowing the exact position on both land and sea became more and more urgent, and the great maritime powers, starting with Spain, instituted very large prizes for those who would find a workable solution. Galileo, after the discovery of Jupiter's satellites, thought of using the periodicity of the motion of the Jovian moons to propose a method that would solve the problem. After several years of lengthy observations and drawing up tables for predicting the positions of the satellites, attempts to propose his method, first to the Spanish court and then to the government of the independent Dutch provinces, proved unsuccessful due to both the inherent difficulties of the method and the inaccuracy in the calculations of the satellite tables. In the last years of his life, recognizing in the young mathematician of Genoese origin, Vincenzo Renieri, excellent skills as both observer and calculator, he entrusted him with the manuscript material he had collected over many years of study, hoping that Renieri would be able to compose tables that would solve the problem. Renieri applied himself to this task with great zeal, first relying on the master's advice and then, after his death, continuing to try to improve the quality of the calculations.Unfortunately, Renieri's sudden death prevented him from completing the work, and the disappearance of the materials he was working on did not allow someone else to continue the work.
After presenting a brief biographical profile of Renieri, I will consider what information we can draw from the manuscript materials of Galileo and his pupil, recovered through the personal efforts .of the grand dukes of Tuscany and preserved in the National Central Library of Florence.

Speaker: Truffa, Giancarlo (Member of SISFA)

51 “Una di telescopi, di lettere e di stelle in movimento”: The Comet Dispute between Cassini, Viviani and Riccioli

The 17th century was an interesting time in which marvelous discoveries were made, even at the cost of broken friendships among scientists. One peculiar aspect was the astronomical dispute over comets that occurred within astronomical circles. The 1660s marked the passage of a comet that many astronomers saw and studied, but only Cassini proposed an explanation that sparked a massive debate in the academic world and caused a rift in the Bolognese Academy. Many opposed Cassini, such as Riccioli, while others, like Viviani and Malvasia, supported Cassini’s work. This paper aims to reconstruct the comet dispute to understand how an extensive exchange of letters and real-time observational experiences shaped the dispute and influenced astronomical studies at the time, paving the way for new and exciting studies in astronomy and cosmology that ultimately led the Cassini-Huygens spacecraft to the edge of the universe.

Speaker: Bercigli, Erika (Università degli Studi di Bologna)

52 Cassini on the Long Time, between Practical Astronomy, Instrumentation and Metrology

From Giovanni Domenico (1625-1712) to Jean-Dominique (1748-1845), four generations of Cassini succeeded each other at the Paris Observatory from 1669 to 1794. Following the thread of the map-making project proposed by Abbot Jean Picard (1620-1682), we will consider the progressive association of the Cassinis with the general triangulation of France. In particular we’ll see how Picard's project envisages contributing to the study of the “figure” of the Earth, a subject that has been little analyzed by historians -- with the exception of the debate that saw Cassinians and Newtonians opposing each other. In the long run, it will be seen that although knowledge by geometric triangulation of the Earth's meridians gradually pushes away the possibility of establishing an “exact” value of the Earth's figure, its investigation leads to an essential development of other forms of scientific knowledge, such as the instrumentation and metrology.

Speaker: Schiavon, Martina (Laboratoire Temps Espace (LTE) - Observatoire de Paris, Université PSL, Sorbonne Université, Université de Lille, LNE, CNRS)

53 The Age of Cassini: The Marriage of Historiography and Iconography in a 18th-Century Painting in Palazzo Patrizi-Montoro.

Within the little-known Baroque series of paintings depicting the history of astronomy, which dates back to the early 18th century and is located in Rome's Palazzo Patrizi-Montoro, the final canvas dedicated to the 17th century, stands out and captures the viewer's attention. In this work, Giandomenico Cassini's long shadow looms over the scene, even though he does not appear in the foreground. The selection of episodes depicted is dominated in terms of size by the silhouettes of San Petronio and the Observatoire, the two poles of the brilliant career of the now elderly scientist, who had become a naturalised French citizen. The scene is also marked by the incipient cultural leadership of Francesco Bianchini and the stay of his nephew Maraldi, at a time when the presence of the astronomer from Perinaldo was still felt among the elite of the Eternal City. In this contribution, I will provide a detailed analysis of the work, demonstrating how the emerging historiography of astronomy, in its ambitious beginnings, draws upon Cassini's eclecticism and Galileo's experimentalism. Iconographically, it condenses the triumphs of the new science under the banners of observation and measurement. It offers a panoramic overview, starting with Tycho and Kepler, progressing through Galileo, Hevelius, and Bouillau, and concluding with Picard and Coronelli. As I have previously argued, the scenes chosen by the Patrizi brothers and painted with the help of their probable collaborators, Monsù Giacomo and Cristoforo, are deeply influenced by Francesco Bianchini's scientific interests. However, the final canvas in the series makes it clear that astronomical and cartographic methods and subjects ultimately derive from the systematic programme of Bianchini's indirect teacher and correspondent. Never before has a work of art so skilfully conveyed the world and the age of Cassini.

Speaker: Gandolfi, Giangiacomo (Istituto Nazionale di Astrofisica (INAF))

Storia della fisica e dell'astronomia / History of Physics and Astronomy

54 Studies on Symmetry in Theoretical Physics: The Universal Validity of Curie’s Principle and Noether’s Theorem

Curie’s 1894 celebrated paper on symmetries has been examined by a previous paper through both its doubly negated propositions of intuitionist logic and its kind of theoretical organization; which was forced by the author to appear as an axiomatic-deductive one; instead it is a problem-based one because it presents ad absurdum arguments and applies to the conclusion of such arguments the principle of sufficient reason. No surprise if an accurate definition of what may be extracted from the paper as a “Curie’s principle” is a difficult problem. A specific paper was devoted to reduce its possible versions to a minimum number.
In present communication the question of the possible universal validity of the commonly called Curie’s principle is examined. Some Roberts’s counter-examples concerning the symmetry of time-reversal are discussed. One may insert this principle as either an axiom within a deductive-axiomatic organization or a methodological principle within a problem-based organization. In both cases a universal validity is denied.
Before Curie’s paper, it was Lazare Carnot that as first introduced symmetry in a physical theory. Also in this case the theoretical organization is based on a problem; both the ad absurdum proofs and the application of the principle of sufficient reason are recognized in some crucial steps of L. Carnot’s algebraic technique. Then the logical structure of this technique is compared with the logical structure of Noether’s theorem determining in non-constructive mathematical way all symmetries of a physical system. Noether’s mathematical steps corresponding to Carnot’s mathematical crucial steps are recognized. This fact proves that also Noether’s general representation of symmetries in theoretical Physics preserves the characteristic features of a problem-based theoretical organization. Hence, the true universality of the symmetry principle is constituted not by the range of a principle stated in words but by the above mathematical steps of the symmetry technique.

Speaker: Drago, Antonino (Dept. Physical Sciences, University Federico II Naples)

55 At Home in a Super-Copernican Cosmos, Part III: The Big Bang Is Now

In the previous two congresses we have respectively detailed (1) the genesis of John Wheeler's idea of a partecipatory universe and the role of a "super-Copernican" community scattered across spacetime and (2) how all that was linked to Wheeler's changing views on the nature of the observer in quantum physics and to his slogan "it from bit". We have thus shown how these topics, intertwined with others (such as the famous delayed-choice experiments and Wheeler's reflections on Bohr's complementarity), were merged and then conceived anew in the context of an original and certainly thought-provoking cosmological scenario. As fascinating as this intellectual trajectory may be, however, one may wonder if, in the end, it was just the phantasmagoria of an eminent but also idiosyncratic physicist. In this third instalment, we intend to underscore and properly contextualize the neglected impact that Wheeler's cosmological views have had on more recent perspectives, such as the work of Thomas Hertog and Stephen Hawking or quantum gravity-related attempts. In this way, we will better realize how Wheeler's ideas, although often misunderstood or extrapolated from their original framework, have proven, once again, to be particularly fruitful.

Speaker: Puleio, Daniele (Pontificia Università Lateranense)

Friday 12 September

La Fisica e il Mare: conoscere, navigare, esplorare / Physics and the Sea: Knowing, Sailing, Exploring

56 Navigation after ‘The Longitude Problem’: Instruments and Innovation in 19th- and 20th-Century Seafaring

The Whipple Museum of the History of Science in Cambridge holds a large collection of scientific devices intended to aid navigation at sea. Some of these are very well known—instruments like the sextant and the chronometer, both designed to help navigators calculate their position when out of sight of land. But many of these devices are more obscure. This talk will consider a range of these less well known instruments, and ponder why so much time and effort was put into their development. I will argue that the ‘longitude problem’ has a much longer history than is typically assumed, with inventors and instrument-makers still developing new and varied tools to help aid navigation a century-and-a-half after the longitude problem is supposed to have been ‘solved’. I will consider, in particular, a pair of portable analogue calculators designed in the 1880s and 1930s to solve problems of spherical trigonometry without the need for paper calculations. Studying these instruments, I argue, offers us a more complex picture of the realities of maritime life, in which fixing location was never easy and in which commercial interests remained focussed on ‘solving longitude’ long after the chronometer and sextant had become standard instruments of navigation at sea.

Speaker: Nall, Joshua (Whipple Museum of the History of Science, University of Cambridge)

57 The Climate Crisis and Its Sentinels

Climate change, starting in the mid-20th century, has been rapid — more so than the scientific community itself had expected — and global. Rapid, global, and synchronous — meaning it has affected every region of the world at the same time, although in different ways. Some regions are considered sentinels of the climate crisis. By this, we mean that they are warming more quickly and intensely than the global average — and for this reason, they are also referred to as hot-spots — and that the effects of warming, the impacts, are highly significant for populations, territories, economic activities, and public health. For example, the entire Mediterranean area is a hot-spot, as are mountain regions worldwide and the Arctic.
In this conference, the global aspects of climate change will be presented, along with the mechanisms driving it. This includes climate change induced by external factors (such as anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions or natural factors like solar activity) as well as internal climate variability. A detailed discussion of the main observed impacts will follow, focusing attention on two different environments — marine and mountain areas. These may seem like disconnected regions of the world, but they are not.

Speaker: Palazzi, Elisa (Dipartimento di Fisica, Università di Torino)

58 Antonio Maria Jaci: A Competitor for the British Prize for Determining Longitude at Sea

Among the many scientific interests of Antonio Maria Jaci from Messina are his studies on the determination of longitude at sea, the results of which were presented to the British Board of Longitude.
After an initial instrumental approach in 1787, Jaci devoted himself to an astronomical formulation published in 1798 and refined with an addition in 1813.
Although it did not win the prize, the study was considered by the committee to be the best of those received.
The aim of this report is to present these peculiar studies by Jaci and to retrace the events related to them in the socio-political context of Messina.

Speaker: Tuscano, Maria Luisa (Associata INAF-OAPA; SISFA)

59 KM3NeT: Deep-sea Neutrinos

KM3NeT (Kilometer Cube Neutrino Telescope) is a European research infrastructure currently under construction in the Mediterranean Sea, with two main sites: ARCA (Astroparticle Research with Cosmics in the Abyss), located off the coast of Capo Passero, Sicily, and ORCA (Oscillation Research with Cosmics in the Abyss), off the coast of Toulon, France. Its primary goal is the study of high-energy neutrinos, both for astrophysical purposes and for fundamental physics.
The infrastructure consists of a three-dimensional array of Digital Optical Modules (DOMs), anchored to the seafloor at depths exceeding 2500 meters. To support detector calibration, KM3NeT is equipped with an advanced network of acoustic sensors. Oceanographic and environmental sensors, including hydrophones and instruments for measuring temperature, pressure, and salinity are also present.
This instrumentation makes KM3NeT a strategic platform for the development of multidisciplinary activities, particularly in the fields of marine biology and oceanography. The acoustic sensors, for instance, enable monitoring of the presence and behavior of cetaceans and other marine species, while the continuous acquisition of environmental data is highly valuable for studying deep-sea ecosystems.
The presentation will provide an overview of the detector architecture, the main scientific objectives of KM3NeT along with an overview of the VHE neutrino event detected in February 2023, and current collaborations with marine research institutions.

Speaker: Badaracco, Francesca (Università di Genova)

11:10 Coffee Break

Gian Domenico Cassini: 400 anni dalla nascita / Gian Domenico Cassini: 400 Years After his Birth

60 The Incomparable Historian: In Memory of John Lewis Heilbron (1934-2023)

Speakers: Gattei, Stefano (Università di Trento), Gambaro, Ivana (DAFIST University of Genova)

61 The Meridian Line of the Meridian Hall of the Genoa University Palace

Illustration of the project to restore the functionality of the meridian line of the Aula Meridiana of the University of Genoa (attributed to Father Corréard in the summer of 1771) by a working group internally constituted by UniGe

Speakers: Candito, Cristina (Università di Genova), Riva, Walter (Istituto Nazionale di Astrofisica (INAF)), Scelsi, Valter (Università di Genova)

Conclusioni / Final Remarks and Farewell