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Not everyone knows the positions of emeritus and honorary professor: they are the highest academic degrees at national and international level, and represent the final recognition of a scientific and university career of particular and recognized prestige.
But these are not simple titles to boast of. In fact, emeritus and honorary professors are on the one hand a fundamental element for the construction of the memory of a great university like ours, on the other, an integral and particularly vital part of the variegated polytechnic community.
With the video column “Impronte politecniche” (Polytechnic imprints) we want to enhance the precious link between past and future, comparing some of our emeritus or honorary professors with teachers currently in activity who have been their students, in conversations at the same time friendly and authoritative.
Retracing the experience of the greats of engineering, architecture and design, and comparing it with today’s world of research, we will once again demonstrate the powerful role that history has in making us understand the present.
Curiosity is the driving force, then you also have to love technology; the engineer has to change the world in order to give society something different.
For our first appointment we take you to the iconic Giulio Natta classroom, on whose wooden seats and desks, generations of students have followed the most diverse engineering lessons. Here we met Sergio Carrà, professor of physical chemistry since 1968 in various Italian universities, and since 1972 professor of thermodynamics applied to chemical engineering at the Politecnico di Milano. Dialoguing with him, Maurizio Masi, professor of food manufaturing.
We follow in the footsteps of Professor Carrà thanks to his vivid voice. We will relive his academic career up and down the Peninsula; relationships with teachers, colleagues and students; his considerations on the interweaving of basic and applied research, between scientists and engineers. Through first-hand anecdotes, we will retrace the path of chemical engineering in Italy, from its gradual opening to the world to the progress achieved in this new century.