POLI-TECH STORIES: Giulio Natta and Polypropylene

POLI-TECH STORIES
Politecnico di Milano meets the Istituto Italiano di Cultura in Toronto
Through its professors, the Politecnico tells stories of polytechnic culture: stories of science, technology and creativity, of the achievements of its great masters, of future visions.

The event will be in english

Maurizio Masi, professor of Applied Physical Chemistry

The story of polypropylene discovery of is not a simple tale of a scientific discovery. It is a story of crossed lives, of Giulio Natta, professor of industrial chemistry at the Milan Polytechnic, and of Pier Candiano Giustiniani, president of Montecatini, one of the most relevant Italian chemical industry. Two people who valued each other so much that they never came to speak confidentially to each other, as a sign of mutual respect. It is the story of how the polymerization of propylene was stubbornly sought within apparently unsatisfactory results and which would have led most researchers to abandon. It is the history of Italy in the 1950s, which painfully emerges from the war, but which is animated by a great desire to do and bet on the future, so much so that in three years, from its discovery the first production plant of the polypropylene in the Ferrara plant was set up. The legacy they left us is a chemical product that alone contributes 0.15% to the gross domestic product of the world.

To attend the event please register here.