Giulio Natta Commemorative Italian Stamp

Born on February 26, 1903 in Imperia, Italy, Giulio Natta was an Italian chemical engineer and Nobel laureate. Natta earned his degree in chemical engineering from the Politecnico di Milano university in Milan in 1924, and in 1927 became a professor at the university. Between 1929 and 1933, Natta was in charge of physical chemistry at the Faculty of Sciences of the University of Milan. He then became a full professor and director of the Institute of General Chemistry of Pavia University from 1933 to 1935. While working at Pavia University, Natta pursued work that utilized crystallography to elucidate the structures of a wide variety of molecules including phosphine, arsine and others.

From 1936 to 1938, Natta served as a full professor and director of the Institute of Industrial Chemistry at the Polytechnic Institute of Turin, before taking over as the head of the Department of chemical engineering at the Politecnico di Milano in 1938. Natta’s work eventually led to the improvement of his earlier collaboration with Karl Ziegler and to the development of the Ziegler-Natta catalyst, which eventually resulted in Natta and Ziegler receiving the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 1963.

Giulio Natta passed away on May 2, 1979.

Sources

Giulio Natta Commemorative Italian Stamp, Science History Institute Archives, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.