The celebrations for the 150th anniversary of Alessandro Volta’s death began on 5 March 1977 with a memorial mass in the cemetery of Camnago. In the afternoon, the mayor of Como, Antonio Spallino, officially inaugurated the “Volta Year”, marking the start of a programme packed with cultural and scientific events.
During the opening day, Carlo Paoloni’s book Storia del metano (History of Methane) and the film Alessandro Volta: storia di un genio a misura d’uomo (Alessandro Volta: Story of a Genius on a Human Scale), produced by Televisione della Svizzera Italiana, are presented. From the outset, the celebrations are characterised by a combination of scientific rigour and cultural dissemination.
The events attract numerous personalities from the international scientific world to Como, including Nobel Prize winners for Physics Nikolaj Basov, Emilio Segrè and Samuel C. C. Ting. In this setting, the Francesco Somaini Prize is awarded to Edoardo Amaldi, who inaugurates the Voltian Year with a lecture on Volta’s relevance in modern physics.
1977 saw an extraordinary concentration of scientific conferences and conventions. Among these, the International Conference on Stochastic Behaviour in Classical and Quantum Systems in Cernobbio stands out, where Mitch Feigenbaum presented the first results of chaos theory, and the 63rd Congress of the Italian Physical Society, attended by several Nobel Prize winners.
Alongside theoretical and experimental physics, the Voltian Year hosts interdisciplinary meetings ranging from the theory of dynamic systems in economics to plasma physics and elementary particle physics. The venues involved – Como, Varenna, Cernobbio and Campione d’Italia – transform the Larian territory into a true international scientific hub.
The scientific initiatives are accompanied by an extensive programme of exhibitions and cultural events: exhibitions on electricity, philatelic exhibitions, art exhibitions, photography, music and dance, literary competitions and popular events. The whole city participates, from institutional venues to shop windows, in a collective tribute to Volta.
The Voltian Year of 1977 concludes as one of the most extensive and varied celebrations ever dedicated to Volta. Science, culture and society come together in a programme that reaffirms the relevance of Volta’s thinking and its fundamental role in contemporary physics and technology.
