Not Just Boys at Via Panisperna: Women at the Royal Physics Institute in Rome

Abstract

This paper retraces the history of some of the women who attended the Royal Physics Institute of Via Panisperna in Rome, from its founding in 1881 until 1937. Much has been written about the so-called Via Panisperna boys; less known is the story of the girls who attended that same institute starting during the directorship of Pietro Blaserna. Nuclear physicist Edoardo Amaldi, in the typewritten notes in which he began to reconstruct the history of the Institute, was one of the first to document women scientists there. Starting with the first women who graduated in physics at the Institute, and also considering the political and institutional context, I reconstruct the stories of Nella Mortara, Laura Capon, and Ginestra Giovene. The latter two later became the wives, respectively, of Enrico Fermi and Amaldi.