The history of the Arcetri Physics Institute from the 1920s to the end of the 1960s

Abstract

The history of the Arcetri Institute of Physics at the University of Florence is analyzed from the beginning of the 20th century to the 1960s. Thanks to the arrival of Garbasso in 1913, not only did the Institute gain new premises on Arcetri hill, but also hosted brilliant young physicists such as Rita Brunetti, Enrico Fermi, Franco Rasetti in the '20s and Enrico Persico, Bruno Rossi, Gilberto Bernardini, Daria Bocciarelli, Lorenzo Emo Capodilista, Giuseppe Occhialini and Giulio Racah in the '30s, engaged in the emerging fields of Quantum Mechanics and Cosmic Rays. This internationally renowned Arcetri School dissolved in the late 1930s mainly for the transfer of its protagonists to chairs in other Italian or foreign universities. After the war, the legacy was taken up by some students of this school who formed research groups in the fields of nuclear physics and elementary particle physics. As far as theoretical physics is concerned, after the Fermi and Persico periods, these studies enjoyed a new expansion in the sixties thanks to the arrival of Raoul Gatto who created in Arcetri the first Italian school of theoretical physics.