Giacomo Ciamician

(1857 - 1922)

Born in Trieste, the scientist and politician Giacomo Ciamician taught chemistry in Rome and Padua before joining the faculty of the University of Bologna, where he conducted experiments on the roof to study the behavior of organic compounds when exposed to light; in 1987 the university named its chemistry department in his honor. He often argued that future generations would have to imagine a world that ran on more than fossil fuels. πIf our black and nervous civilization, based on coal, shall be followed by a quieter civilization based on the utilization of solar energy, that will not be harmful to progress and to human happiness,” he said in 1912.