Luigi Rolla

However, shortly after this annoimcement two Italian chemists, Luigi Rolla (1882-1960) and Lorenzo Fernandes (1902-1977), who were working at the University of Florence, claimed to have discovered element 61 in monazite from Brazil two years before the Americans, back in 1924 (Rolla and Fernandes, 1926,1927a,b,c, 1928). All their results had been meticulously written dovm in two long papers, but they had decided not to... 

In 1924, Italian chemists Luigi Rolla and Rita Brunetti claimed to have found element 61. They su ested the name florentium for their home town of Florence. At about the same time, scientists at the University of Illinois also announced the discovery of element 61. They proposed the name illinium for Illinois. 

Luigi Vittorio Maria Rolla was bom in Genoa on 21 May 1882, the next-to-last son of Giuditta Boggiano (1848-1902), from La Spezia, and Giovanni Rolla (1839-... 

When, in 1919, Luigi Rolla was called to occupy the Chair of General Chemistry, he brought with him a solid reputation as a scientist earned through his work at the renowned Walther Nemst s school in Berlin. Rolla was to become the scientist who dominated Italian chemistry during the period between the two world wars (Fig. 4.15). 

Fig. 4.15 Official poitrait of Luigi Rolla. Department of Chemistry Hugo Sehiff, University of Florenee...

Fig. 4.16 Senator Felice Bensa, Genovese industrialist and friend of Luigi Rolla. He personally donated large sums of money to modernize the Chemistry Institutes at Florence and was a great supporter of the research on the isoiation of florenlium. Property of the authors...

Early in 1943, George De Hevesy (1885-1966) was nominated for the Nobel Prize by Luigi Rolla, the only nomination received by the Nobel Foundation that year. When, in 1945 the Nobel Commission awarded the prize retroactively (due to World War II), it was based on the only nomination that De Hevesy had received in 1943, that is, Rolla s. 

Fontani M, Orna MV (2011) Luigi Rolla un fisico camuffato da chimico, Memorie di Scienze Fisiche e Natural . Atti del XIV Congresso Nazionale di Storia e Fondamenti della Chimica, pp 203-214... 

Rolla L (1950) Letter to D. Marotta, Archivio dell Accademia dei XL, fondo Luigi Rolla, 23... 

Walther Hermann Nemst, the great German scientist, Nobel laureate in Chemistry, and father of the Third Law of Thermodynamics, had two Florentine disciples Luigi Rolla and Giorgio Piccardi. The latter became professor of physical chemistiy at the University of Florence. Piccardi had studied fluctuating phenomena well before Ilya Prigogine (1917-2003). His best disciple, later successor, was Enzo Ferroni who, upon Piccardi s retirement, was promoted to the Chair of Physical Chemistry at the Universily of Florence. Ferroni had also served as director of the Department of Chemistiy and Professor of Physical Chemistry at the Universily of Cagliari, Sardinia. 

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