A Decline and Fall In the Future of Italian Astronomy? (original) (raw)
Proceedings of the International Astronomical Union, 2018
Even though Italy officially joined the IAU in 1921, Italian astronomers were involved in its birth as early as 1919, when Annibale Riccò, Director of the Astrophysical Observatory of Catania, proposed to the IAU Committee to hold its first General Assembly in Rome. This contribution will analyze the role played by Italian astronomers in the development of the IAU from its foundation to the Second World War. The recent project of reordering of the astronomical historical archives in Italy permits for the first time a more in-depth study of the relations between Italian astronomers and the international scientific community.
The AstroBID: Searching through the Italian astronomical heritage
2014
The scientific heritage held in the National Institute for Astrophysics (INAF), made up of rare and modern books, instruments, and archival documents spanning from the 15th to the early 20th century, marks the milestones in the history of astronomy in Italy. To promote this history of this historical collection, the Libraries and Historical Archives Service and the Museums Service of INAF have developed a project aimed at creating a single web portal: Polvere di stelle. I beni culturali dell’astronomia italiana (Stardust. The cultural heritage of the Italian astronomy). This portal searches for data coming from the libraries, the instruments collections and the historical archives, regarding the heritage of the Italian Observatories. The BID (Books, Instruments, Documents) of the project is the creation of a multimedia web facility, which allows the public to make simultaneous searches on the three different types of materials. 1. The Cultural Mission of the National Institute for A...
The AstroBID: Preserving and Sharing the Italian Astronomical Heritage
Communications in Computer and Information Science, 2016
The cultural heritage of the National Institute for Astrophysics (INAF), made of rare and modern Books, Instruments and archival Documents, the AstroBID, marks the milestones in the history of astronomy in Italy. INAF, in collaboration with the Department of Physics and Astronomy of the University of Bologna, has developed a project to preserve, digitize, and valorize its patrimony by creating a web portal Polvere di Stelle. It shows the cultural heritage of 12 libraries and historical archives, and 13 instrument collections, and allows both academics and a wider audience to search simultaneously the AstroBID materials.
IGI (the Italian Grid initiative) and its impact on the Astrophysics community
2009
IGI – the Association for the Italian Grid Infrastructure – has been established as a consortium of 14 different national institutions to provide long term sustainability to the Italian Grid. Its formal predecessor, the Grid.it project, has come to a close in 2006; to extend the benefits of this project, IGI has taken over and acts as the national coordinator for the different sectors of the Italian e-Infrastructure present in EGEE. IGI plans to support activities in a vast range of scientificdisciplines – e.g. Physics, Astrophysics, Biology, Health, Chemistry, Geophysics, Economy, Finance – and any possible extensions to other sectors such as Civil Protection, e-Learning, dissemination in Universities and secondary schools. Among these, the Astrophysics community is active as a user, by porting applications of various kinds, but also as a resource provider in terms of computing power and storage, and as middleware developer.
Science with IUE and the Growth of an Astrophysical Group in Milan: from X-Ray Binaries to AGN
The contribution of an astrophysics group based in Milan to the science with the IUE satellite during its almost 20 years lifetime has focussed on high energy sources, of both galactic (LMXRB, HMXRB, and black hole candidates) and extragalactic (AGN) nature. The results of this long term research and in particular of the latest multiwavelength campaigns conducted simultaneously with IUE are reviewed here. the high flux variability suggested the interesting possibility of studying the correlation of the X-ray with the optical and UV emission.
The Vatican Observatory Summer Schools in Observational Astronomy and Astrophysics
Transactions of the International Astronomical Union
Two seemingly incongruous components have come together about every two years: the serene terraces of the Pope’s summer residence at Castel Gandolfo, and the noisy exuberance of 25 beginning-level graduate students. Add in a small faculty of first-rate professors and a resourceful local support team, and one has the ingredients for the month-long Vatican Observatory Summer Schools. The eighth School takes place in the summer of 2001, and its goals are the same as when the series started in 1986: to encourage and motivate a mix of young people from industrialized and developing countries who are at critical moments of their research careers, and to make a small, but significant contribution to the progress of developing countries by exposing some of their most talented young citizens to people involved in high quality research in astrophysics. This account outlines the nature of the Schools, their follow-up, and something of how the spirit of sharing of personal and institutional res...
Research Policy, 2011
The paper analyses the Italian contribution to the world scientific production, its relative citation impact, its international collaborations and scientific productivity compared with the most productive EU countries over the period 1980-2009. It shows that despite the fact that the level of funding has been dramatically low during the past decades, Italian science has been able to increase its performance up to 2007. Italian science is a "cathedral in the desert". However, a recent reduction in the level of scientific production, the lagging behind in international scientific collaboration (highly correlated with the relative citation impact) and the great heterogeneity of researchers' productivity (absence of correlation of number of researchers with quality and quantity of scientific production) may mark the start of a decline of Italian science. The paper concludes that the increased funding must go hand-in-hand with reform of autonomy and governance and calling for a sound system of internal quality control and performance enhancement.
New Space, 2016
Our research aims to measure the knowledge produced by scientific space missions in the fields of particle and high-energy astrophysics. We start with the assumption that the acquisition of new scientific knowledge is reflected in the scientific literature produced by the international scientific community. A bibliometric analysis of the contribution of knowledge by Italian researchers (researchers working in Italian research institutes) within the international context provides a very positive picture relating to the output of the research carried out in Italy in those fields. A productivity analysis tells us that Italian public resources invested in Italian space science missions compare well with those invested in the astronomy and astrophysics sector at the international level.
Società italiana degli storici della fisica e dell'astronomia. Atti del 33° Convegno annualeProceedings of the 33th annual Conference (Acireale-Catania-Siracusa, 2013). Ediz. bilingue, 2016
Proceedings of th e XXXIII Convegno Nazionale della Società Italiana degli Storici della Fisica e dell’Astronomia, Acireale, Catania, Siracusa, 4-7 settembre 2013, 498 pp., illus., bibl., indexes, Pavia: Pavia University Press, 2016