Gli scienziati italiani a congresso prima dell'Unità

Nine Congresses for Italian Scientists, based on the example of other European countries, were organised in Italy between 1839 and 1847, in the same number of cities on the peninsula (Pisa, Turin, Florence, Padua, Lucca, Milan, Naples, Genoa and Venice). They involved more than six thousand people - approximately one thousand of whom were foreigners - including academics, university professors, specialists and representatives of public institutions and technical, administrative and military organisations of the eight Italian states. During the course of two weeks of meetings, the participants - who reached a peak of 1613 in Naples - discussed various topics related to the Natural Sciences, in the strictest sense of the phrase, including medicine and agriculture. These meetings offer a comprehensive and precise panorama of the development of science in Italy in the 19th century, chronicling the scientific evolution of the age, the result also of the exchanges and debates which they made possible. In said Congresses, the specific demands of scientific research were combined with those of economic development and intertwined with the still rather confused feelings of national unity, as decalred by the growing ranks of "scholars" bound by a fervent love for the Italian motherland. In 1847 in Venice, on the occasion of the ninth Congress, the references to "nostra Italia" were so explicit they led to the early closing of proceedings due to the forceful intervention of the Austrian police. In 1861, with the first stage of the Unity of Italy underway, a vain attempt was made to resurrect the aforementioned travelling Congresses, revitalising them with the addition of humanistic themes. The one in Siena, in 1862, was a clear failure. This was somewhat predictable, given that the Unity had removed the obstacles that prevented such meetings and which - at the same time - provided a powerful and uncontollable stimulus to hold them.