La geologia del petrolio in Italia nel XIX secolo: il diario di viaggio in Valacchia del Professor Giovanni Capellini

Giovanni Capellini (La Spezia, 23 August 1833 - Bologna, 28 May 1922) was a prominent professor of the University of Bologna, where he was appointed to the first chair of geology ever established in Italy (26 September 1860). Here, he spent all his academic career, and he was elected Rector of the Alma Mater for several terms and, later, Senator of the Italian Kingdom. Co-founder of the Italian Geological Society, Capellini organized the second International Geological Congress in Bologna (1881), thanks to his extensive network of foreign correspondents. His innate qualities as an active organizer and coordinator were combined with a marked inclination to overcome an exclusively provincial vision of scientific problems. Unlike other national Geological Institutes of a predominantly regional nature, he gave the Bologna Institute an international drive and relaunched the whole University organization that was being built at the end of the nineteenth century with a keen eye on worldwide relationships. Recognized as one of the Italian founders of the modern geological sciences, during his intense academic life Capellini also dealt with a number of technical issues relating to petroleum geology, a field still in its infancy at the time. Still very young, he was engaged in this activity as an academic consultant on behalf of domestic and foreign oil companies. Capellini published several studies dedicated to petroleum geology issues. A recent survey of the archival sources in Bologna revealed a travelogue of his journey to Wallachia, a field trip that he organized in 1864 as a consultant to a London oil company. In fact, Romania, together with Italy, was the European Country where hydrocarbons exploration developed the most, immediately after the fortunate North American discoveries of 1859 and the start of the modern and globalized Oil and Gas industry. This travelogue, still in the form of an unpublished manuscript, is kept in the archives of the Geological and Paleontological Museum of the University of Bologna. Although it contains geomorphological notes, stratigraphic sketches and various geological sections, the typical contents of the surveyor geologist field notebook, it is also an agenda of daily notes, structured in a sort of travel diary, albeit minimal in its narrative structure. More importantly, it offers a first-hand account of the multifaceted activity of a young researcher and scientist already fully integrated into the European cultural milieu.