Chemistry Museum
The Chemistry Museum will be built in the museum complex of our University, located in Mezzocannone 8, in the former Zoology Laboratories in the Cortile del Salvatore, in the premises of the former Collegio Massimo dei Gesuiti. The Chemistry Museum, whose construction was requested by the Rector Prof. Gaetano Manfredi in October 2016, is in full construction and has the support of the Rector Prof. Matteo Lorito. The project for the renovation of the premises was carried out by engineers and architects of the Technical Office of the University. The renovation work on the premises began after having received the "no objections" from the Superintendence of Environmental and Monumental Heritage and that of Archaeological Heritage of Campania.
The Chemistry Museum will be the ideal point of connection between the existing museums in the Cortile del Salvatore: it will be located between the Physics Museum, set up in the former Analytical Laboratory of the Chemical Institute in Via Mezzocannone 4, and the Paleontology Museum, located in the splendid courtyard of San Marcellino and Festo. The Chemistry Museum will exhibit equipment acquired and preserved by the founding fathers of Neapolitan Chemistry, such as Professors Agliarolo, Bakunin, Giordani, Liberti, Panizzi, Liguori, Nicolaus, and Professors Corradini, Mangoni, Ballio etc.. The inventory of the available equipment and documentation was created with the collaboration of Dr. Fabio Borbone, who followed all the phases of the construction of the Museum.
The Museum will exhibit various instruments: voltameters, X-ray tubes, glass equipment, including the historic Kipp used by generations of chemistry students for the production of sulfuric acid. The Museum will be divided into sections: there will be a scales section, a polarimeter section, a spectrophotometer section and a magnetic resonance spectrometer (NMR) section. In one of the sections, the "Istituto Chimico" plaque will be displayed, appropriately restored, which for more than a hundred years was on the door of the historic headquarters of the Institute in Via Mezzoccanone 4. In the corridor parallel to the main gallery that overlooks the ramp that leads from Via Paladino to Via Tari, display cases will be set up to display handcrafted molecular models made of wood, the first ones made of plastic and aluminum up to the most modern kits. In another display case, documents and publications of scientific and historical interest will be displayed, fortunately found by Prof. Evidente during an inspection carried out in Via Mezzocannone 4 in the former Giordani Library.
The Museum will also host a room for screening documentaries on the history of chemistry and chemistry lessons held by eminent professors. It is hoped to recover from the RAI film library the lessons of Prof. Liguori that were broadcast on TV. The film library will certainly have a heritage: the film made by Gianni Amelio (not on sale, aired on November 18, 1990) which tells the story of Enrico Fermi and other great scientists (Segrè, Pontecorvo, Arnaldi and Majorana) who worked at the Institute of Physics of the University of Rome, in via Panisperna, on the identification of new radioactive elements and the study of nuclear reactions for which Fermi received the Nobel Prize in 1938. The Museum will be accompanied by a catalogue which will report "The history of the Department of Chemical Sciences between past and future", the photos and captions of all the instruments which will be exhibited in the Museum and the history and content of the precious volumes collected since 1700 and kept in the Francesco Giordani Historical Library. The Chemistry Museum will not only allow us to keep the memory of the history of Chemistry in the Neapolitan and international scientific panorama, but it will also be a point of attraction and of great scientific and cultural value that students, PhD students, teachers and researchers, tourists and citizens of our territory will be able to enjoy.
Edited by Antonio Evidente, with the collaboration of Prof. Emeritus Lelio Mazzarella, Prof. Pietro Pucci, Prof. Fabio Borbone, and Dr. Marinella Rotondo.