Enzo Ferroni (1921-2007): the History of an Eclectic Chemist

Enzo Ferroni (Florence, 25 March 1921 – 9 April 2007) was an Italian chemist, full professor in physical chemistry at the University of Florence, where he served as Rector from 1976 to 1979, a renowned international scientist who initiated a new branch of chemistry, that applied to cultural heritage conservation. The history of his scientific and academic life offers a particular interest in a half-century cross-section of the history of chemistry in Italy and the entire world. In particular, Ferroni developed the colloids, surface, and interface chemistry in Italy immediately after the Second World War in a country where it was almost non-existent, sensing the extraordinary potential of this branch of chemistry in the fields of basic and applied research. This paper aims to reconstruct the history of this eclectic chemist starting from his pioneering studies in Italy on colloids, surfaces, and interfaces that, after the Second World War, came to be widely popular within the international scientific literature following three milestones represented by the studies of the Nobel laureates in chemistry, Richard A. Zsigmondy (1925), Theodor Svedberg (1926), and Irving Langmuir (1932).  Enzo Ferroni’s far-sighted and visionary ideas concerning the investigation of these systems and others with biological implications by the nascent resonance spectroscopies and surface diffraction techniques were recognised and underlined as the revolutionary approach by ever more sophisticated instrumentations that were to characterise chemistry research to this day. The consecration of the extraordinary potential and peculiarities of colloids, surfaces, and interfaces would come to fruition in 1991 with the Nobel laureate in physics Pierre-Gilles de Gennes, who finally discovered that “the methods developed to study ordinary phenomena in simple systems can be generalised to more complex states of matter, especially liquid crystals, and polymers” (official motivation of the Prize), recognising soft matter as a peculiar form of matter in the condensed phase. These pioneering frontiers in the newly established soft matter field can be considered Ferroni’s last message in the bottle to young researchers facing the twenty-first century. The eclecticism of this chemist emerged from two other compelling aspects that are illustrated in this article: the chemistry for cultural heritage that Ferroni conceived, pushed by the dramatic damages suffered by the works of art after the Florence flood in 1966, and his strong vision about the equal dignity of basic and applied research, that led him to establish fruitful relationships with industries aimed to enhance technological fallouts, as the research by the Nobel laureates in chemistry (1963) Giulio Natta and Karl Ziegler had clearly shown.