Andreas Karachalios: 'I chimici di fronte al fascismo. Il caso di Gio-vanni Battista Bonino (1899-1985)', Istituto Gramsci Siciliano, Palermo, 2001

摘要

The biographies of renowned scientists are prone to become hagiographies, es-pecially when the scientist passed away shortly before and pupils are alive, ac-tive, and prepared to act in defense of their master. This is not the case with Karachalios' book, which offers an unbi-ased portrait of Giovanni Battista Bonino, the initiator of quantum chem-istry in Italy. Bonino's biography is wel-come also because it is the first full-length biography of an Italian contem-porary chemist. The volume is divided into two dis-tinct parts of the same length, the first one being the biography and the second one a rich collection of documents. In the biographical part, Karachalios deals with the youth, the studies, and the be-ginning of the academic career of Bonino (ch. 2); the situation of the Ital-ian chemical community in the first dec-ade of the fascist regime and Bonino's personal commitment (ch. 3); Bonino's research in the new field of Raman spec-troscopy and the formation of his own research school (chs. 4 and 5); the mak-ing of a new discipline, quantum chemis-try, in Italy (ch. 6); and the years of po-litical engagement, 1936-1941 and later (ch. 7). The documental part consists of 33 appendices, of which almost half are dedicated to documents about Bonino's difficult situation at the end of World War II and after the victory of the anti-fascist Resistance