Science and technology in Italy

Science and technology in Italy has a long presence, from the Roman era and the Renaissance. Through the centuries, it has made many significant inventions and discoveries in biology, physics, chemistry, mathematics, astronomy, and other sciences. In 2019, Italy was the world's sixth-highest producer of scientific articles, publishing more than 155,000 documents. From 1996 to 2000, it published two million. It ranked 28th in the Global Innovation Index for 2025.

As early as the 1st century AD, Rome had become one of the biggest and most advanced cities in the world. The ancient Romans invented new technologies to improve the city's sanitation systems, roads, and buildings. They developed a system of aqueducts that piped fresh water into the city, and they built sewers that removed the city's waste. The wealthiest Romans lived in large houses with gardens. Most of the population lived in apartment buildings made of stone, concrete, or limestone. The Romans developed new techniques and used materials such as volcanic soil from Pozzuoli, a village near Naples, to make their cement harder and stronger. This concrete allowed them to build large apartment buildings called insulae.

Italy had a scientific "golden age" during the Renaissance. Leonardo da Vinci, was trained to be a painter, but his interests and achievements spread into an astonishing variety of fields that are now considered scientific specialties. He conceived ideas vastly ahead of his time. Notably, he invented concepts for the helicopter, an armed fighting vehicle, the use of concentrated solar power, the calculator, a rudimentary theory of plate tectonics, the double hull, and many others, using inspiration from Chinese ideas. In addition, he greatly advanced the fields of knowledge in anatomy, astronomy, civil engineering, optics, and hydrodynamics.

The scientist Galileo Galilei is called the first modern scientist. His work constitutes a significant break from that of Aristotle and medieval philosophers and scientists (who were then referred to as "natural philosophers"). Galileo's achievements include improvements to the telescope, various astronomical observations, and initial formulation of the first and second laws of motion. Galileo was suppressed by the Catholic Church, but was a founder of modern science. Other astronomers, such as Giovanni Domenico Cassini and Giovanni Schiaparelli, made discoveries about the Solar System. In mathematics, Joseph Louis Lagrange was active before leaving Italy. Giuseppe Peano, Lagrange, Fibonacci, and Gerolamo Cardano, whose Ars Magna is generally recognized as the first modern treatment on mathematics, made fundamental advances to the field. Luca Pacioli established accounting principles. Physicist Enrico Fermi, a Nobel Prize laureate, led the team in Chicago that developed the first nuclear reactor. Fermi helped design the atomic bomb as part of the Manhattan Project. Italian physicists Emilio Segrè, who discovered the elements technetium and astatine, and the antiproton; Bruno Rossi, a pioneer in Cosmic Rays and X-ray astronomy; and other physicists were forced to leave Italy in the 1930s due to Fascist laws against Jews.

Other physicists include Amedeo Avogadro (contributions to molecular theory), Evangelista Torricelli (inventor of the barometer), Alessandro Volta (inventor of the electric battery), Guglielmo Marconi (inventor of radio), Galileo Ferraris and Antonio Pacinotti (pioneers of the induction motor), Alessandro Cruto (pioneer of the light bulb), and Innocenzo Manzetti (pioneer of automatons and robotics), Ettore Majorana (discovered Majorana fermions), Carlo Rubbia (1984 Nobel Prize in physics), and Antonio Meucci (developing voice-communication device sometimes credited as the first telephone). In 1964, Pier Giorgio Perotto designed one of the first desktop programmable calculators, the Programma 101.

In biology, Francesco Redi was the first to challenge the theory of spontaneous generation by demonstrating that maggots come from eggs of flies. Marcello Malpighi founded microscopic anatomy; his student Antonio Maria Valsalva became famous for his research focused on the anatomy of the ears, and Valvasia pupil Giovanni Battista Morgagni is the anatomist generally regarded as the father of modern anatomical pathology. Lazzaro Spallanzani conducted research in bodily functions, animal reproduction, and cellular theory. Camillo Golgi, whose many achievements include the discovery of the Golgi complex. Rita Levi-Montalcini, who discovered the nerve growth factor, was awarded the 1986 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine). Giulio Natta received the 1963 Nobel Prize in Chemistry for work on high polymers. Giuseppe Occhialini received the 1979 Wolf Prize in Physics for the discovery of the pion or pi-meson decay in 1947. Ennio De Giorgi, a Wolf Prize in Mathematics recipient in 1990, solved Bernstein's problem about minimal surfaces and the 19th Hilbert problem on the regularity of solutions of elliptic partial differential equations.

The first internal combustion engine was invented by Eugenio Barsanti and Felice Matteucci, the Barsanti-Matteucci engine, in 1852. It was fueled by a mix of air and hydrogen. The first gasoline internal combustion engine motor vehicle was invented by Enrico Bernardi in 1884. The first pc (personal computer), the Olivetti P6040 and the P6060 was invented by Olivetti engineer Pier Giorgio Perotto in 1975.

The Accademia dei Lincei (Italian pronunciation: [akkaˈdɛːmja dei linˈtʃɛi]; literally the "Academy of the Lynx-Eyed", but anglicised as the Lincean Academy) is one of the oldest and most prestigious European scientific institutions, located at the Palazzo Corsini on the Via della Lungara in Rome, Italy.