Giulio Natta (26 February 1903 – 2 May 1979) was an Italian chemical engineer and Nobel laureate. He won a

Nobel Prize in Chemistry ) , image = Nobel Prize.png , alt = A golden medallion with an embossed image of a bearded man facing left in profile. To the left of the man is the text "ALFR•" then "NOBEL", and on the right, the text (smaller) "NAT•" then "M ...

in 1963 with

Karl Ziegler Karl Waldemar Ziegler (26 November 1898 – 12 August 1973) was a German chemist who won the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 1963, with Giulio Natta, for work on polymers. The Nobel Committee recognized his "excellent work on organometallic compounds ...

for work on high

polymer A polymer (; Greek '' poly-'', "many" + ''-mer'', "part") is a substance or material consisting of very large molecules called macromolecules, composed of many repeating subunits. Due to their broad spectrum of properties, both synthetic a ...

s. He also received a

Lomonosov Gold Medal The Lomonosov Gold Medal (russian: Большая золотая медаль имени М. В. Ломоносова ''Bol'shaya zolotaya medal' imeni M. V. Lomonosova''), named after Russian scientist and polymath Mikhail Lomonosov, is awarde ...

in 1969.

Biography

Early years

Natta was born in

Imperia Imperia (; lij, Inpêia or ) is a coastal city and ''comune'' in the region of Liguria, Italy. It is the capital of the Province of Imperia, and historically it was capital of the ''Intemelia'' district of Liguria. Benito Mussolini created the ...

Italy Italy ( it, Italia ), officially the Italian Republic, ) or the Republic of Italy, is a country in Southern Europe. It is located in the middle of the Mediterranean Sea, and its territory largely coincides with the homonymous geographical re ...

. He earned his degree in chemical engineering from the

Politecnico di Milano The Polytechnic University of Milan () is the largest technical university in Italy, with about 42,000 students. The university offers undergraduate, graduate and higher education courses in engineering, architecture and design. Founded in 186 ...

university in

Milan Milan ( , , Lombard: ; it, Milano ) is a city in northern Italy, capital of Lombardy, and the second-most populous city proper in Italy after Rome. The city proper has a population of about 1.4 million, while its metropolitan city h ...

in 1924. In 1927 he passed the exams for becoming a professor there. From 1929 to 1933, he was also in charge of physical chemistry at the Faculty of Sciences of the

University of Milan The University of Milan ( it, Università degli Studi di Milano; la, Universitas Studiorum Mediolanensis), known colloquially as UniMi or Statale, is a public research university in Milan, Italy. It is one of the largest universities in Europe ...

. In 1933 he became a full professor and the director of the Institute of General Chemistry of

Pavia University The University of Pavia ( it, Università degli Studi di Pavia, UNIPV or ''Università di Pavia''; la, Alma Ticinensis Universitas) is a university located in Pavia, Lombardy, Italy. There was evidence of teaching as early as 1361, making it one ...

, where he stayed until 1935. During this time he began using crystallography to elucidate the structures of a wide variety of molecules including phosphine, arsine and others. In that year he was appointed full professor in physical chemistry at the University of Rome.

Career

From 1936 to 1938 he moved as a full professor and director of the Institute of Industrial Chemistry at the Polytechnic Institute of Turin. In 1938 he took over as the head of the Department of

chemical engineering Chemical engineering is an engineering field which deals with the study of operation and design of chemical plants as well as methods of improving production. Chemical engineers develop economical commercial processes to convert raw materials int ...

at the

university, in a somewhat controversial manner, when his predecessor Mario Giacomo Levi was forced to step down because of

racial laws Anti-Jewish laws have been a common occurrence throughout Jewish history. Examples of such laws include special Jewish quotas, Jewish taxes and Disabilities (Jewish), Jewish "disabilities". Some were adopted in the 1930s and 1940s in Nazi Germany ...

against

Jew Jews ( he, יְהוּדִים, , ) or Jewish people are an ethnoreligious group and nation originating from the Israelites Israelite origins and kingdom: "The first act in the long drama of Jewish history is the age of the Israelites""Th ...

s being introduced in Fascist Italy. Natta's work at Politecnico di Milano led to the improvement of earlier work by

and to the development of the

Ziegler–Natta catalyst A Ziegler–Natta catalyst, named after Karl Ziegler and Giulio Natta, is a catalyst used in the synthesis of polymers of 1-alkenes ( alpha-olefins). Two broad classes of Ziegler–Natta catalysts are employed, distinguished by their solubility: * ...

. He received the

in 1963 with

for their research in high

Personal life

In 1935 Natta married Rosita Beati; a graduate in literature, she coined the terms "

isotactic Tacticity (from el, τακτικός, taktikos, "relating to arrangement or order") is the relative stereochemistry of adjacent chiral centers within a macromolecule. The practical significance of tacticity rests on the effects on the physical p ...

", "atactic" and "syndiotactic" for polymers discovered by her husband. They had two children, Giuseppe and Franca. Rosita died in 1968."NATTA, Giulio"
in ''Dizionario Biografico degli Italiani'', Volume 78 (2013). Natta was diagnosed with

Parkinson's disease Parkinson's disease (PD), or simply Parkinson's, is a long-term degenerative disorder of the central nervous system that mainly affects the motor system. The symptoms usually emerge slowly, and as the disease worsens, non-motor symptoms becom ...

in 1956. By 1963, his condition had progressed to the point that he required the assistance of his son and four colleagues to present his speech at the Nobel ceremonies in Stockholm. Natta died in

Bergamo Bergamo (; lmo, Bèrghem ; from the proto- Germanic elements *''berg +*heim'', the "mountain home") is a city in the alpine Lombardy region of northern Italy, approximately northeast of Milan, and about from Switzerland, the alpine lakes Como ...

at age 76.

References

External links

* including the Nobel Lecture, December 12, 1963 ''From the Stereospecific Polymerization to the Asymmetric Autocatalytic Synthesis of Macromolecules'' {{DEFAULTSORT:Natta, Giulio 1903 births 1979 deaths People from Imperia Polytechnic University of Milan alumni Neurological disease deaths in Lombardy Deaths from Parkinson's disease Italian chemists Italian chemical engineers 20th-century Italian inventors Italian Nobel laureates Nobel laureates in Chemistry Members of the French Academy of Sciences Foreign Members of the USSR Academy of Sciences Polymer scientists and engineers Polytechnic University of Milan faculty Recipients of the Lomonosov Gold Medal University of Milan faculty