The Most Famous
CHEMISTS from Italy
This page contains a list of the greatest Italian Chemists. The pantheon dataset contains 602 Chemists, 5 of which were born in Italy. This makes Italy the birth place of the 17th most number of Chemists behind Netherlands, and India.
Top 6
The following people are considered by Pantheon to be the most legendary Italian Chemists of all time. This list of famous Italian Chemists is sorted by HPI (Historical Popularity Index), a metric that aggregates information on a biography’s online popularity.
1. Amedeo Avogadro (1776 - 1856)
With an HPI of 76.78, Amedeo Avogadro is the most famous Italian Chemist. His biography has been translated into 90 different languages on wikipedia.
Lorenzo Romano Amedeo Carlo Avogadro, Count of Quaregna and Cerreto (, also US: , Italian: [ameˈdɛːo avoˈɡaːdro]; 9 August 1776 – 9 July 1856) was an Italian scientist, most noted for his contribution to molecular theory now known as Avogadro's law, which states that equal volumes of gases under the same conditions of temperature and pressure will contain equal numbers of molecules. In tribute to him, the ratio of the number of elementary entities (atoms, molecules, ions or other particles) in a substance to its amount of substance (the latter having the unit mole), 6.02214076×1023 mol−1, is known as the Avogadro constant. This constant is denoted NA, and is one of the seven defining constants of the SI.
2. Stanislao Cannizzaro (1826 - 1910)
With an HPI of 62.47, Stanislao Cannizzaro is the 2nd most famous Italian Chemist. His biography has been translated into 39 different languages.
Stanislao Cannizzaro ( KAN-iz-AR-oh, also US: -it-SAR-, Italian: [staniˈzlaːo kannitˈtsaːro]; 13 July 1826 – 10 May 1910) was an Italian chemist. He is famous for the Cannizzaro reaction and for his influential role in the atomic-weight deliberations of the Karlsruhe Congress in 1860.
3. Ascanio Sobrero (1812 - 1888)
With an HPI of 62.05, Ascanio Sobrero is the 3rd most famous Italian Chemist. His biography has been translated into 31 different languages.
Ascanio Sobrero (12 October 1812 – 26 May 1888) was an Italian chemist, born in Casale Monferrato. He studied under Théophile-Jules Pelouze at the University of Turin, who had worked with the explosive material guncotton. He studied medicine in Turin and Paris and then chemistry at the University of Gießen with Justus Liebig, and earned his doctorate in 1832. In 1845 he became a professor at the University of Turin. During his research he discovered, in 1847, nitroglycerine. He initially called it "pyroglycerine", and warned vigorously against its use in his private letters and in a journal article, stating that it was extremely dangerous and impossible to handle. In fact, he was so frightened by what he created that he kept it a secret for over a year. Another of Pelouze's students was the young Alfred Nobel, who returned to the Nobel family's defunct armaments factory and began experimenting with the material around 1860; it did, indeed prove to be very difficult to discover how to handle it safely. In the 1860s Nobel received several patents around the world for mixtures, devices and manufacturing methods based on the explosive power of nitroglycerine, eventually leading to the invention of dynamite, ballistite and gelignite from which he made a fortune. Although Nobel always acknowledged and honoured Sobrero as the man who had discovered nitroglycerine, Sobrero was dismayed by the uses to which the explosive had been put and claimed he was almost ashamed by his discovery.
4. Giulio Natta (1903 - 1979)
With an HPI of 61.92, Giulio Natta is the 4th most famous Italian Chemist. His biography has been translated into 66 different languages.
Giulio Natta (Italian: [ˈd͡ʒu.ljo ˈnat.ta]; 26 February 1903 – 2 May 1979) was an Italian chemical engineer and Nobel laureate. He won a Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 1963 with Karl Ziegler for work on high density polymers. He also received a Lomonosov Gold Medal in 1969.
5. Édouard Herzen (1877 - 1936)
With an HPI of 56.16, Édouard Herzen is the 5th most famous Italian Chemist. His biography has been translated into 15 different languages.
Édouard Herzen (Florence, 1877–1936) was a Belgian chemist of Russian descent who played a leading role in the development of physics and chemistry during the twentieth century. He collaborated with industrialist Ernest Solvay, and participated in the first, second, fourth, fifth, sixth and seventh Solvay Conferences.
6. Agnes Pockels (1862 - 1935)
With an HPI of 52.70, Agnes Pockels is the 6th most famous Italian Chemist. Her biography has been translated into 26 different languages.
Agnes Luise Wilhelmine Pockels (14 February 1862 – 21 November 1935) was a German chemist whose research was fundamental in establishing the modern discipline known as surface science, which describes the properties of liquid and solid surfaces and interfaces. Pockels became interested in fundamental research in surface science through observations of soaps and soapy water in her own home while washing dishes. She devised a surface film balance technique to study the behavior of molecules such as soaps and surfactants at air-liquid interfaces. From these studies, Pockels defined the "Pockels Point" which is the minimum area that a single molecule can occupy in monomolecular films. Pockels was an autodidact. She was not a paid, professional scientist and had no institutional affiliation and so is an example of a citizen scientist. By contrast, her brother Friedrich Carl Alwin Pockels, for whom the Pockels effect was named, was a professor of theoretical physics at the University of Heidelberg.
People
Pantheon has 6 people classified as Italian chemists born between 1776 and 1903. Of these 6, none of them are still alive today. The most famous deceased Italian chemists include Amedeo Avogadro, Stanislao Cannizzaro, and Ascanio Sobrero. As of April 2024, 1 new Italian chemists have been added to Pantheon including Édouard Herzen.
Deceased Italian Chemists
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Amedeo Avogadro
1776 - 1856
HPI: 76.78
Stanislao Cannizzaro
1826 - 1910
HPI: 62.47
Ascanio Sobrero
1812 - 1888
HPI: 62.05
Giulio Natta
1903 - 1979
HPI: 61.92
Édouard Herzen
1877 - 1936
HPI: 56.16
Agnes Pockels
1862 - 1935
HPI: 52.70
Newly Added Italian Chemists (2024)
Go to all RankingsOverlapping Lives
Which Chemists were alive at the same time? This visualization shows the lifespans of the 6 most globally memorable Chemists since 1700.
