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

15 Sept 2026, 09:00 → 18 Sept 2026, 15:00 Europe/Rome

Naples

 

with the support of

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with the patronage of

 

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

The 46th National Congress of the Italian Society for the History of Physics and Astronomy will take place in Naples on 15-18 September 2025. 

The main venues will be the INAF - Astronomical Observatory of Capodimonte, Museum of Physics of the University of Naples Federico II, and the INGV - Vesuvius Observatory

The Congress

The Congress is part of a long‑established series of annual meetings that SISFA has organized since its foundation. Its purpose is to promote research in the history of physics and astronomy in Italy, encouraging contributions not only from academic historians but also from independent scholars and school teachers interested in exploring how the history of these disciplines can enrich today’s scientific education. At the same time, the Congress offers a valuable opportunity to strengthen existing collaborations and to foster new connections among SISFA members, scholars from related societies, and researchers working in the same or complementary fields.
Historians of physics and astronomy are warmly invited to participate, and the invitation is extended to all scholars and researchers who share these interests.
The program will include both invited lectures and contributed oral presentations. The official languages of the Congress will be Italian and English.

During the meeting, SISFA will also confer the Award for the Best Graduate Thesis in the History of Physics or the History of Astronomy (Premio di Laurea SISFA 2026).

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The conference benefits from the financial and technical support of the INAF–Scientific Directorate and the Astronomical Observatory of Capodimonte, the Museum Centre and the Department of Physics of the University of Naples Federico II, the INGV–Vesuvius Observatory, the Interuniversity Consortium of Applied Physical Sciences, the INFN–Naples Division, and the National Committee for the Celebrations of the Bicentenary of the Death of Giuseppe Piazzi.

The congress is held under the patronage of Comune di Napoli, International Astronomical Union, Istituto Nazionale di Astrofisica, and the Società Nazionale di Scienze, Lettere ed Arti in Napoli.

announcement First Bulletin 46 SISFA Congress.pdf Second Bulletin 46 SISFA Congress.pdf

Tuesday 15 September

Registration

Opening

Conveners: Schipani, Pietro (Istituto Nazionale di Astrofisica (INAF)), Zanini, Valeria (Istituto Nazionale di Astrofisica (INAF))

Keynote Speech

1 Revisiting the Long History of Quantum Theory

This paper presents results and methods from a collaborative international research project on the history of quantum physics. The project builds on decades of work on various aspects of the field's development, from its origins in the nineteenth century to the end of the twentieth. It aims at a synthesis of this century-long history, drawing on the research to dispel popular myths and give a wider public access to historical insights into how quantum physics developed. The project makes use of AI methods and demonstrates their potential for such a synthesis. To this end we developed QuHiRa (Quantum History Research Assistant), an AI assistant that opens up the project's corpus to historical inquiry.

Speaker: Prof. Renn, Jürgen (Max Planck Institute of Geoanthropology)

Physics and Physicists of the Twentieth Century in Naples

2 Correlation and Connectivity in Complex Systems

After a brief introduction to the origins of statistical physics in Naples, I will discuss the topics developed with the contributions of many researchers from the Neapolitan scientific community and international collaborations.
Statistical physics describes systems with many degrees of freedom, whose interactions often give rise to complex emergent phenomena. Examples include phase transitions, as can be observed, for example, in the transition from a gaseous to a liquid state as the temperature decreases. These transitions are characterized by the presence of strong, large-scale correlations. The mechanism of this phenomenon can be traced back to a percolative model in which correlations are associated with the presence of geometric clusters. These clusters manifest themselves in the form of connected fractal structures. Beyond the interest in critical phenomena, the study of complex networks has recently received significant development in the social, biological, and technological fields, including the web, social networks, neural networks, and so on. In this conversation, I will discuss the role of correlation and connectivity in various complex systems.

Speaker: Coniglio, Antonio (Università di Napoli "Federico II" Dipartimento di Fisica "Ettore Pancini")

10:50 Coffe break

Physics and Physicists of the Twentieth Century in Naples

3 Fifty Years of Naples at CERN, 1976-2016

The INFN Unit of Naples and the Department of Physics of the Federico II University have been participating in CERN experiments since 1976, when the Neapolitan group joined the R209 collaboration at the Intersecting Storage Rings (ISR). Since then, this collaboration has continued uninterrupted for fifty years. During this period, the groups from Naples have taken part in the main CERN experiments, from the ISR to the LEP and the Large Hadron Collider (LHC), contributing to the design and construction of detectors, the development of electronics, software and computing infrastructures, and data analysis.
In addition to collider physics, Neapolitan groups have contributed to the development of neutrino physics, initiated in the early 1980s with the CHARM II experiment and continued with CHORUS and OPERA at the Gran Sasso National Laboratories, where tau‑neutrino interactions produced by a CERN beam were directly observed for the first time.
The presentation retraces the evolution of these activities by following the growth of the groups and their participation in subsequent experiments, including ATLAS, CMS, NA62, SND@LHC and SHiP, up to research and development activities in view of the Future Circular Collider (FCC). Some of the main scientific results to which the Neapolitan groups have contributed will also be recalled, including the discovery of the Higgs boson in 2012.

Speaker: Prof. Lista, Luca (INFN-Napoli)

4 The Former Physics Pavilions of the Mostra d'Oltremare and the Roots of the Neapolitan Schools of Physics

The former Physics Pavilions of the Mostra d'Oltremare in Naples represent an important chapter in the history of twentieth-century Italian physics. From the late 1950s onward, these buildings hosted the establishment of pioneering activities in theoretical and experimental physics that laid the foundations for the subsequent development of several fields of physics in the city.
After outlining the historical background of the Mostra d'Oltremare and its Physics Pavilions, this contribution focuses on the early development of physics research within them, reconstructing the scientific environment that emerged around the Advanced School in Theoretical and Nuclear Physics and the first experimental programmes carried out within the Physics Pavilions.
Today, although abandoned for more than two decades, the former Physics Pavilions remain a significant testimony to an important component of Naples' scientific and cultural heritage. Their preservation and enhancement are among the main goals of the Association All'Ombra del Cervo di Rodi APS, which promotes their recovery through the creation of a Centre of Excellence for research, technological innovation, and lifelong learning.

Speaker: La Rana, Giovanni (INFN-Naples)

5 The Origins of Contemporary Artificial Intelligence between Statistical and Cybernetic Physics

This contribution reviews the historical roots of contemporary Artificial Intelligence, highlighting its connection to both twentieth-century Statistical physics and Cybernetics.
In the 1920s, within the field of statistical physics, the well‑known Ising–Lenz model was introduced. Over the course of the twentieth-century, it gained increasing relevance and also found applications in “non‑traditional” areas of physics. In the 1980s, with the introduction of Hopfield networks and Boltzmann machines, the statistical connectionist approach progressively gained ground, replacing the logicist‑symbolic paradigm typical of classical Artificial Intelligence, ultimately receiving recognition with the 2024 Nobel Prize.
Alongside this line of research, in the first half of the twentieth-century, Norbert Wiener (1894–1964) and others proposed, within the study of intelligent behavior, the new science of cybernetics: “the science of control and communication in the animal and the machine”. In Italy, cybernetics found particularly fertile ground within the community of physicists as for example, the Neapolitan cybernetics school founded by Eduardo Caianiello (1921–1993), which in the 1960s hosted N. Wiener as a visiting scientist.
Many contemporary AI techniques, besides being connectionist, make use of concepts originally developed within cybernetics. Consider, for example, the links between Transformers (used in Large Language Models) and Information Theory, or between Convolutional Neural Networks and Signal Analysis.
In this light, contemporary AI, emerging around the beginning of the twenty‑first century, is better understood as rooted in the statistical physics and cybernetics research originating in the first half of the twentieth century, rather than as evolution of symbolic‑logic AI from the second half.

Speaker: Dr Gagliardi, Francesco

6 The Life and Science of Vittorio Silvestrini. His Legacy for Future Generations

This work presents Vittorio Silvestrini's noteworthy scientific achievements in the field of elementary particles and details his life, including the fundamental choices he made that have had such a significant impact on the relationship between science and society.
Vittorio Silvestrini left a profound mark on the history of Naples, primarily for having founded the Città della Scienza Science Center.
Professor Silvestrini has been committed to a form of science that is socially oriented, environmentally conscious, and open to dialogue with other dimensions of culture. He could be considered a role model for future generations.
In 1972, in Naples, he decided to devote his research to the development of solar energy as an alternative energy source, even though this meant having leave the research group that had been a constant part of his life up to that point. A similar choice was made when he decided to devote himself to science communication. Vittorio Silvestrini was regarded by many as a visionary, one who challenged the limits imposed by the authorities and bureaucracy, and the prejudices against Southern Italy and Naples.
He was convinced that science should also open itself up to other areas of life, extending even to the inner dimension of the human being. In this regard, he cited research related to the anthropic principle: the idea that the values of the fundamental constants of the universe are not random, but appear to be “fine-tuned” in such a way as to make the existence of life and consciousness possible.

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

13:30 Lunch

Wednesday 16 September

7 The Former S-RPIF Archive at INAF/IAPS: Preserving the Historical and Cartographic Legacy of Early Planetary Exploration

Planetary exploration began well before the global dissemination of the digital infrastructures that characterize today’s scientific landscape. During the 1960s and 1970s, mission data processing was confined to a few specialized institutions, making the distribution of scientific results dependent on the physical shipping of analog materials. To institutionalize access, NASA established in 1977 the Regional Planetary Imaging Facilities (RPIF) network. In the mid-1980s, the network expanded to Europe, including the Southern-Europe RPIF (S-RPIF) in Rome, hosted at the CNR’s Reparto di Planetologia, later integrated into the National Institute for Astrophysics (INAF) and currently housed within the "Fototeca Coradini" at IAPS institute in Rome.
From the perspective of the history of astronomy, the RPIF Archive represents a documentary heritage of exceptional value, connecting modern space science with the historical material preserved in Italian observatories. The collection preserves crucial milestones of space cartography, including hundreds of lunar maps from the Apollo programs, Martian topographic quadrangles featuring original IAU nomenclature, iconographic data from Mariner and Viking missions, and Soviet documentation dating back to the 1960s. A crucial set is represented by the originals of the telescopic atlases of the Moon where the first orbital and landed robotic missions have been planned.
The archive operates as a living laboratory where the past engages with the future of planetary science. Despite the cessation of official NASA support in 2020, ongoing recovery efforts at IAPS highlight the urgency of preserving these tangible witnesses, testifying to the enduring presence of Italian scientific research on the international stage.

Speaker: Dr Frigeri, Alessandro (Istituto Nazionale di Astrofisica (INAF))