What is “Day of Remembrance“? January 27, 1945 marked the demolition of the gates of the Auschwitz concentration camp. Thus, as stated in Article 1 of the Law of July 20th 2000, n. 211, “The Italian Republic recognizes the 27th day of January, date of the gates of Auschwitz,” Day of Remembrance “in order to remember the Holocaust (extermination of the Jewish people), the racial laws, the persecution of Italian Jewish citizens , Italians who suffered deportation, imprisonment, death, and those who, even in different fields and camps, have opposed the project of extermination, and risked their lives to save more lives as well as protected the persecuted.”
On the occasion of the “Day of Remembrance 2018“, the Italian Cultural Institute is organizing a conference Living matter: The Periodic Table as seen by a chemist by Matteo Duca. In the eyes of a 21st century chemist, Primo Levi seems both a close and a very distant figure. His short stories set at university let us feel in his shoes, so much so that we can picture ourselves working with him in the laboratory; at the same time, we cannot help noticing the sea change that has taken place in the practice of chemistry. In fact, academic laboratories increasingly rely on advanced chemical analytical instruments, whereas Levi’s chemistry was first and foremost a hand-to-hand struggle with matter. When reading Levi’s The Periodic Table, today’s chemists can (re)discover the ‘materiality’ of chemistry that still characterises this discipline, besides the catchphrases and buzzwords currently fashionable, such as ‘materials science’. It is matter that matters, and chemists’ struggle with it can be won either through force or ingenuity: the latter, a veritable example of the Greek mêtis, often features in Levi’s book and continues to be one of chemists’ distinctive skills. Moreover, the twofold role of matter in these short stories let us appreciate its narrative potential, not only as what makes the plot tick, but also one of its main characters. Hence we can better understand why The Periodic Table was chosen by the Royal Institution as the ‘best science book ever written’: rarely do popular science books manage to attain such a perfect balance between fact and fiction as in Levi’s short stories. A ‘chemical equilibrium’, we could say, dynamic, lively and utterly engrossing, a driving force which profoundly transforms us, page after page, as the plot unravels. By talking about the chemistry of the elements featuring in The Periodic Table, we will see how Levi managed to breathe life into matter, shaping it into a proxy for the deepest human emotions. Thus, Levi’s message acquires a lasting value, much as the carbon atom which closes the book and keeps on living through infinite transformations.
Monday January 22nd 2018, 6pm
Istituto Italiano di Cultura
1200, Dr. Penfield
The conference will be held in Italian
Matteo Duca is currently a postdoctoral researcher at the Institut National de la Recherche Scientifique, Varennes. His passion for science beyond the laboratory motivates him to collaborate with the centre of science communication Cœur des Sciences (UQAM) on the organisation of outreach activities. In 2012, he obtained his PhD cum laude at Leiden University (the Netherlands), with a research project on electrochemistry and catalysis. This research field studies the chemical reactions that require electricity to occur, and those that, instead, produce it. The separation of water into oxygen and hydrogen, i.e. water electrolysis, is an example of the former, while among the latter we can cite batteries. The Italian scientist Alessandro Volta, regarded as one of the “founding fathers” of electrochemistry, perfectly embodies both aspects of this discipline, as he was among the first to observe that water electrolysis could be driven by a battery (the so-called voltaic pile).
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