Seminari impartit per Massimiano Bucchi (Università degli Studi di Trento)

Through the history, stories and controversies of the Nobel prizes in the sciences and their interweaving with society, politics, and culture, Massimiano Bucchi investigates the public image of science and its transformations from the early XXth century to the present. 

An original, accessible and engaging pathway to understanding the social role of science through the stories and figures who have left their mark on the world’s most famous prize: from the surprising and tormented story of the Nobel prize awarded to Einstein, to the countryside doctor who went in a few years from obscure practice to Nobel fame; from the “ghosts” of Nobel prizes which were surprisingly not awarded, to the prizes assigned to results which have been later disproved; from the Nobel laureates who have become celebrities to those which have been almost completely forgotten.

 A fascinating journey through the different political meanings and social roles attributed to the prize: from the surrogate of competition among nations (‘science as a continuation of politics through other means’) to the Nobel ceremony as ‘ritual of consecration’ akin to the making of saints in a secular society. 

 The book is the outcome of several years of original research on the public image of the Nobel prize, conducted on the Nobel archives at the Royal Academy of Science in Stockholm as well as on a wide range of popular media sources.

Massimiano Bucchi is Professor of Science and Technology in Society and of Science Communication at the University of Trento and has been visiting professor in Asia, Europe, North America and Oceania. He has published several books (in Italy, UK, USA, Brazil, Finland, China, Korea, Spain and Latin America) and papers in journals such as Nature and Science. His most recent books include Newton’s Chicken. Science in the Kitchen (Guanda, 2013, also published in France, Finland, Brazil, Portugal, Spain, Argentina and Korea) and A Fistful of Ideas. Stories of Innovations Which Have Changed Our Life (Bompiani, three editions, 2016). He is the editor of the international peer reviewed journal Public Understanding of Science (Sage). He regularly contributes to newspapers (Repubblica, La Stampa) and to the prime time science TV programme Superquark (Rai).