On December 15, at 11:30, in the historic XV c. main building of the Faculty of Engineering of the University of Rome “La Sapienza” in San Pietro in Vincoli, the IEEE Milestone Dedication ceremony honoring Giovanni Giorgi took place in the presence of the Magnificent Rector Antonella Polimeni and the Dean Antonio D’Andrea.
The Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE), the world’s largest scientific and technical-professional organization, conferred the prestigious Milestone recognition on Sapienza University, on the proposal of prof. Fabrizio Frezza of the Department of Information Engineering, Electronics and Telecommunications. The Milestone celebrates Giovanni Giorgi (1871-1950), engineer, scientist, and professor at the Sapienza University, where he taught “Telegraphic and Telephone Transmissions and “Measurements” and “Electrical Communications,” for his conception of the International System of Measurement Units: this system is today universally used in the scientific and technical fields, as well as in everyday life.
A Milestone is the most prestigious recognition bestowed by IEEE to celebrate places where astounding achievements in Electrical and Electronic Engineering took place. It has been already conferred, in Italy, to commemorate the work of Alessandro Volta, Galileo Ferraris, Guglielmo Marconi, Enrico Fermi and, more recently, to celebrate the Virgo project on gravitational waves.
In the afternoon, the event continued with the unveiling of a second plaque at the “Galileo Galilei” Technical-Industrial Institute, a high school which houses the “Fondo Giorgi”. This is a collection of over 5000 documents, which includes the personal library of the scientist and vividly testifies his cultural formation in the first half of the twentieth century, together with his relations with the international scientific community. During the event, which was attended by the highest international and national IEEE authorities, two interdisciplinary technical sessions were held, with speeches by the IEEE Historical Committee (prof. Antonio Savini, University of Pavia), by the National Institute of Metrological Research of Turin (dr. Luca Callegaro), by the Department of Philosophy (prof. Nunzio Allocca) and by the Department of Physics (prof. Valerio Parisi), as well as by librarians (dr. Antonietta A. Zucconi, Sapienza, and dr. Chiara Carlucci, INAPP).
