Alle origini di un’impresa di successo: Vito Volterra e il Consiglio Nazionale delle Ricerche

The Italian National Research Council (CNR) was founded in 1923. The idea of the CNR was born during the First World War when the Allied powers dis- cussed the need to establish a multidisciplinary research center that would combine technical-scientific and industrial experience in the military field. Vito Volterra, renowned mathematician, senator and protagonist of Italian science policy, played a leading role in the creation of the CNR. In 1917 Volterra established an Office of Inventions and Research within the War Department and began collaboration with French, British and American counterparts such as George Ellery Hale, who pro- moted the creation of the National Research Council of the United States. After the First World War, Volterra attempted to transform the Inventions and Research Office into a centralized and extra-university research structure, supported by national labora- tories for high-level technical-experimental research. At the same time, Volterra closely followed the inter-Allied initiatives that led to the birth of the International Research Council in 1919. The IRC configuration envisaged international disciplinary unions, which corresponded, at the level of the member states, to national committees gathered in research councils financed directly by their governments. After four years of frustrated attempts opposed by many parties, in 1923 Volterra finally established the National Research Council, as a projection of the IRC and based at the Accademia Nazionale dei Lincei. He was First President of the CNR until 1926. In this period Volterra wanted to create a large national physics and chemistry laborato- ry outside the university, in which numerous interested parties collaborated such as the technical services of the various state administrations, and the industrial realities of the country, but also in close connection with the academic world. Weakened by the oppo- sition of the most conservative part of university professors to his idea of the CNR and by his strong anti-fascism, Volterra was not confirmed as president of the CNR. In 1926 the CNR was reformed, detached from the Accademia dei Lincei and placed under the direct control of the government. Keywords: Italian National Research Council;Vito Volterra; science and society; science and politics