Antonio Garbasso

Antonio Garbasso (1871 to 1933) was an Italian physicist and National Fascist Party politician, born in Vercelli. He graduated in physics at the University of Turin in 1892 with Andrea Naccari, then went to Germany to follow advanced courses under Heinrich Hertz at the University of Bonn and Hermann von Helmholtz at the University of Berlin. He taught mathematical physics at the University of Pisa and the University of Turin, became associate professor of experimental physics at the University of Genoa in 1903, and in 1913 moved to the chair at the Istituto di Studi Superiori in Florence, where he strengthened the Physics Institute of Arcetri and helped create a school of physics. From 1895 he worked on electromagnetism in the direction set by Maxwell and from 1905 on spectroscopy, and in 1918 he created a laboratory of optics and precision mechanics that became the future National Institute of Optics. He was elected mayor of Florence in 1920, was appointed to the Senate of the Kingdom of Italy in 1924 and became the first podesta of Florence in 1927.