APPROVED FOR RELEASE: 2009/06/16: CIA-RDP01-00707R000200080002-5
Science
A. General (S)
The birthplace of modern science, Italy has a strong scientific tradition that can be traced back to the Renaissance. The outstanding achievements during the 16th through 19th centuries of famous men such as Galileo, Torricelli, Galvani, Volta, and Avogadro are a matter of record. And the city-states of Rome, Florence, and Naples became the seats of academies of science more than three centuries ago. During the 20th century, there have been numerous distinguished Italian scientists, including Guglielmo Marconi, a Nobel Prize winner in 1909, who served as the first president of the National Research Council (CNR) after it was founded in 1923. Other Nobel winners were Enrico Fermi in 1938 and Giulio Natta in 1963.
Italians have made important contributions in science, including chemistry, nuclear physics, electronics, and medicine during the past 50 years, but Italy has not maintained its much earlier position of leadership in science generally. During the Mussolini era following World War I, scientific activity was diverted toward military applications. This redirection of activity, emigration of many gifted young scientists, including Fermi, to the United States, and World War II damage and disruption wiped out much of the national research and development capability. The rebuilding process has been slow, and today among the Western European countries Italy is outranked in scientific capabilities by the United Kingdom, West Germany, France, Sweden, and the Netherlands. It has been estimated that the country is spending less than 0.9% of its gross national product for research and development. There are several factors contributing to the relatively slow progress of science in Italy: The lack of natural resources—particularly coal, petroleum, and metal ores—has retarded applied research and engineering, the impact of the war—considerable loss of the younger and stronger scientific and technical personnel and extensive damage to research facilities—still remains, and although industrial growth has been outstanding during the postwar period and research funding has expanded rapidly, the pace has not been rapid enough for Italy to catch up with other highly industrialized countries. Moreover, despite its remarkable industrial growth in the last decade or so, Italy is making a slow transition from scientific discoveries to operational applications.
Another restraining factor on scientific and technological research is the general chronic instability of the Italian political situation, which has led to long delays in the passage of appropriation bills for scientific activities. Also, none of the major reforms recommended by the president of the CNR (Professor Alessandro Faedo), such as reorganization of various agencies concerned with scientific research, higher pay for scientific staff, university reform, and strengthening of agricultural and industrial research, have been acted on. Although the slowdown of scientific progress has been most apparent since 1970, a trend toward disruption of research activities within various elements of the university institutes and departments, autonomous research centers, and those of the government actually began about 6 years ago.
1
APPROVED FOR RELEASE: 2009/06/16: CIA-RDP01-00707R000200080002-5
